Censorship in the United States
Encyclopedia
In general, censorship in the United States, which involves the suppression of speech or other public communication, raises issues of freedom of speech
, which is constitutionally protected by the First Amendment
to the United States Constitution
.
This freedom, though fundamental, has also been accompanied since its enshrinement with contest and controversy. For instance, restraints increased during periods of widespread anti-communist sentiment, as exemplified by the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It is also legal to express certain forms of hate speech
so long as one does not engage in the acts being described or urge others to commit illegal acts. However, more severe forms have led to people or groups such as the Ku Klux Klan
being denied certain marching permits or the Westboro Baptist Church
being sued, though the initially adverse ruling against the latter was later overturned on appeal in the US Supreme Court. Thus while legal history has defined certain finite limitations, courts have historically held in general that freedom of speech, in order to exist and function, necessarily extends to even the unpopular, offensive, and distasteful.
The First Amendment is a protection against censorship imposed by laws, but does not give protection against corporate censorship
, the sanctioning of speech by spokespersons, employees, and business associates by threat of monetary loss, loss of employment, or loss of access to the marketplace. Legal expenses can sometimes be a significant unseen restraint where there may be fear of suit for libel.
According to the Reporters Without Borders
2010 Press Freedom Index
, the United States is currently 20th in the world in terms of press freedom. Certain forms of speech, such as obscenity and defamation, are restricted in major media outlets by the government or by the industry on its own.
, a New York newspaper printer. He printed a newspaper that publicly bashed the ruler at this time, and he was taken to jail. He was taken to court and charged with seditious libel
for assailing the corrupt royal governor of New York. His lawyer Andrew Hamilton
defended him well, and was made famous for his speech "truth cannot be libel." This court case paved the way for freedom of the press in the United States to be adopted in the constitution.
". In 1798, President John Adams
signed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts
, the fourth of which, the Sedition Act or "An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes against the United States" set out punishments of up to two years' imprisonment for "opposing or resisting any law of the United States" or writing or publishing "false, scandalous, and malicious writing" about the President
or Congress
(but specifically not the Vice-President
). The act was allowed to expire in 1801 after the election of Thomas Jefferson
, Vice President at the time of the Act's passage.
The Sedition Act
of 1917, passed in connection with the United States joining the Allied Powers in the First World War, was a controversial law that led to imprisonment of many prominent individuals for opposing the war or the draft. State laws prohibiting "sedition" were also passed and used to prosecute and persecute alleged "seditionists" during this period, including many people guilty only of being members of the Wobblies. However, the Sedition Act expired shortly after the end of the First World War; the state sedition acts, if in place, are undoubtedly unconstitutional under the Brandenburg
doctrine of imminent lawless action
as well as the former doctrine of clear and present danger
.
."
The free speech decisions of the United States Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren
, which served from 1953 to 1969, extended the protections of the First Amendment to local government, and brought much stricter standards of review for what government actions were acceptable.
The state of Maryland retained its movie ratings board an unusually long time, abandoning it in the 1980s in favor of the private MPAA's voluntary ratings scheme.
, the US Postmaster General
refused to allow the mails to carry abolitionist pamphlets to the South.
case was the first to establish the doctrine that prior restraint
was in most cases unconstitutional. Prior restraint is censorship which prevents material from being published in the first place. The alternative form of censorship occurs as punishment for unlawful or harmful material already published, usually after having the opportunity to dispute the charge in court.
that made it a criminal offense for anyone to
It also required all non-citizen
adult residents to register with the government; within four months, 4,741,971 aliens had registered under the Act's provisions.
The Act is best known for its use against political organizations and figures, mostly on the left. From 1941 to 1957, hundreds of socialists were prosecuted under the Smith Act. The first trial, in 1941, focused on Trotskyists
, the second trial in 1944 prosecuted alleged fascists
and, beginning in 1949, leaders and members of the Communist Party USA
were targeted. Prosecutions continued until a series of Supreme Court
decisions in 1957 threw out numerous convictions under the Smith Act as unconstitutional
. The statute itself, however, had not been removed from the books as of early-middle April 2008.
In 1915, the US Supreme Court decided the case Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio
in which the court determined that motion pictures were purely commerce and not an art, and thus not covered by the First Amendment
. This decision was not overturned until the Supreme Court case, Joseph Burstyn, Inc v. Wilson
in 1952. Popularly referred to as the "Miracle Decision", the ruling involved the short film "The Miracle", part of Roberto Rossellini
's anthology film
L'Amore
(1948).
Between the Mutual Film and the Joseph Burstyn decisions local, state, and city censorship boards had the power to edit or ban films. City and state censorship ordinances are nearly as old as the movies themselves, and such ordinances banning the public exhibition of "immoral" films proliferated.
Public outcry over perceived immorality in Hollywood and the movies, as well as the growing number of city and state censorship boards, led the movie studios to fear that federal regulations were not far off; so they created, in 1922, the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association (which became the Motion Picture Association of America in 1945), an industry trade and lobby organization. The association was headed by Will H. Hays
, a well-connected Republican lawyer who had previously been United States Postmaster General; and he derailed attempts to institute federal censorship over the movies.
In 1927 Hays compiled a list of subjects, culled from his experience with the various US censorship boards, which he felt Hollywood studios would be wise to avoid. He called this list "the formula" but it was popularly known as the "don'ts and be carefuls" list. In 1930, Hays created the Studio Relations Committee (SRC) to implement his censorship code, but the SRC lacked any real enforcement capability.
The advent of talking pictures
in 1927 led to a perceived need for further enforcement. Martin Quigley
, the publisher of a Chicago-based motion picture trade newspaper, began lobbying for a more extensive code that not only listed material that was inappropriate for the movies, but also contained a moral system that the movies could help to promote - specifically a system based on Catholic theology. He recruited Father Daniel Lord
, a Jesuit priest and instructor at the Catholic St. Louis University, to write such a code and on March 31, 1930 the board of directors of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association adopted it formally. This original version especially was once popularly known to as the Hays Code, but it and its later revisions are now commonly called the Production Code
.
However, Depression economics and changing social mores resulted in the studios producing racier fare that the Code, lacking an aggressive enforcement body, was unable to redress. This era is known as Pre-Code Hollywood.
An amendment to the Code, adopted on June 13, 1934, established the Production Code Administration (PCA), and required all films released on or after July 1, 1934 to obtain a certificate of approval before being released. For more than thirty years following, virtually all motion pictures produced in the United States and released by major studios adhered to the code. [1] The Production Code was not created or enforced by federal, state, or city government. In fact, the Hollywood studios adopted the code in large part in the hopes of avoiding government censorship, preferring self-regulation to government regulation.
The enforcement of the Production Code led to the dissolution of many local censorship boards. Meanwhile, the US Customs Department
prohibited the importation of the Czech film Ecstasy (1933
), starring an actress soon to be known as Hedy Lamarr
, an action which was upheld on appeal.
In 1934, Joseph I. Breen (1888–1965) was appointed head of the new Production Code Administration (PCA). Under Breen's leadership of the PCA, which lasted until his retirement in 1954, enforcement of the Production Code became rigid and notorious. Breen's power to change scripts and scenes angered many writers, directors, and Hollywood mogul
s. The PCA had two offices, one in Hollywood, and the other in New York City. Films approved by the New York PCA office were issued certificate numbers that began with a zero.
The first major instance of censorship under the Production Code involved the 1934 film Tarzan and His Mate
, in which brief nude scenes involving a body double for actress Maureen O'Sullivan
were edited out of the master negative of the film. Another famous case of enforcement involved the 1943
western The Outlaw
, produced by Howard Hughes
. The Outlaw was denied a certificate of approval and kept out of theaters for years because the film's advertising focused particular attention on Jane Russell
's breasts. Hughes eventually persuaded Breen that the breasts did not violate the code and the film could be shown.
Some films produced outside the mainstream studio system during this time did flout the conventions of the code, such as Child Bride
(1938), which featured a nude scene involving 12-year-old actress Shirley Mills
. Even cartoon sex symbol Betty Boop
had to change from being a flapper
, and began to wear an old-fashioned housewife skirt.
In 1952, in the case of Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overruled its 1915 decision and held that motion pictures were entitled to First Amendment protection, so that the New York State Board of Regents could not ban "The Miracle", a short film that was one half of L'Amore
(1948), an anthology film
directed by Roberto Rossellini
. Film distributor Joseph Burstyn
released the film in the U.S. in 1950, and the case became known as the "Miracle Decision" due to its connection to Rossellini's film. That in turn reduced the threat of government regulation that justified the Production Code, and the PCA's powers over the Hollywood industry were greatly reduced.
At the forefront of challenges to the code was director Otto Preminger
, whose films violated the code repeatedly in the 1950s. His 1953
film The Moon is Blue
, about a young woman who tries to play two suitors off against each other by claiming that she plans to keep her virginity until marriage, was the first film to use the words "virgin", "seduce" and "mistress", and it was released without a certificate of approval. He later made The Man with the Golden Arm
(1955
), which portrayed the prohibited subject of drug abuse, and Anatomy of a Murder
(1959
) which dealt with rape
. Preminger's films were direct assaults on the authority of the Production Code and, since they were successful, hastened its abandonment.
In 1954
, Joseph Breen retired and Geoffrey Shurlock was appointed as his successor. Variety
noted "a decided tendency towards a broader, more casual approach" in the enforcement of the code.
Billy Wilder
's Some Like It Hot
(1959
) and Alfred Hitchcock
's Psycho (1960
) were also released without a certificate of approval due to their themes and became box office hits, and as a result further weakened the authority of the code.
(1961), and The Leather Boys
(1963) offered a daring social commentary about gender roles and homophobia
that violated the Hollywood Production Code, yet the films were still released in America. The American gay rights, civil rights
, and youth movements prompted a reevaluation of the depiction of themes of race, class, gender, and sexuality that had been restricted by the Code.
In 1964 The Pawnbroker
, directed by Sidney Lumet
and starring Rod Steiger
, was initially rejected because of two scenes in which the actresses Linda Geiser
and Thelma Oliver fully expose their breasts; and a sex scene between Oliver and Jaime Sánchez, which it described as "unacceptably sex suggestive and lustful." Despite the rejection, the film's producers arranged for Allied Artists to release the film without the Production Code seal and the New York censors licensed The Pawnbroker without the cuts demanded by Code administrators. The producers also appealed the rejection to the Motion Picture Association of America.
On a 6-3 vote, the MPAA granted the film an "exception" conditional on "reduction in the length of the scenes which the Production Code Administration found unapprovable." The exception to the code was granted as a "special and unique case," and was described by The New York Times at the time as "an unprecedented move that will not, however, set a precedent."
The requested reductions of nudity were minimal, and the outcome was viewed in the media as a victory for the film's producers. The Pawnbroker was the first film featuring bare breasts to receive Production Code approval. In his 2008 study of films during that era, Pictures at a Revolution, author Mark Harris wrote that the MPAA's action was "the first of a series of injuries to the Production Code that would prove fatal within three years."
When Jack Valenti
became President of the MPAA in 1966, he was immediately faced with a problem regarding language in the film version of Edward Albee
's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
(1966). Valenti negotiated a compromise: The word "screw" was removed, but other language, including the phrase "hump the hostess," remained. The film received Production Code approval despite having language that was clearly prohibited. The British-produced, but American financed film Blowup
(1966) presented a different problem. After the film was denied Production Code approval, MGM
released it anyway, the first instance of an MPAA member company distributing a film that didn't have an approval certificate. There was little the MPAA could do about it.
Enforcement had become impossible, and the Production Code was abandoned entirely.
, and to a greater extent during World War II
, war correspondent
s accompanied military forces, and their reports were subject to advance censorship to preserve military secrets. The extent of such censorship was not generally challenged, and no major court case arose from this issue, and even the Supreme Court found it constitutional on the grounds that it "protected free speech from tyranny".
The Office of Censorship
, an emergency wartime agency, heavily censored reporting during World War II
. On December 19, 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8985, which established the Office of Censorship and conferred on its director the power to censor international communications in "his absolute discretion." Byron Price
was selected as the Director of Censorship. However, censorship was not limited to reporting. "Every letter that crossed international or U.S. territorial borders from December 1941 to August 1945 was subject to being opened and scoured for details."
In later conflicts the degree to which war reporting was subject to censorship varied, and in some cases it has been alleged that the censorship was as much political as military in purpose. This was particularly true during the Vietnam War
and the invasion of Grenada
.
The executive branch of the federal government attempted to prevent the New York Times from publishing the top-secret Pentagon Papers
during the Vietnam War
, warning that doing so would be considered an act of treason under the Espionage Act of 1917
. The newspaper prevailed in the famous New York Times Co. v. United States
case.
In 1991, during the U.S.-led UN invasion of Iraq
during the presidency of George H. W. Bush
, The Pentagon
placed restrictions on media coverage of the ground war to protect confidential military
information.
Such issues arose again during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq
, when many embedded reporters accompanied soldiers as they made their way into the country. These reports were subject to censorship in that they were not allowed to reveal a unit's exact location.
Wartime censorship was a form of mass surveillance
. For international communications, like those done by Western Union
and ITT, this mass surveillance continued after the wars were over. The Black Chamber
received the information after WWI. After WWII NSA's
Project SHAMROCK
performed a similar function.
is the term describing a period of intense anti-Communist suspicion in the United States that lasted roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s.
The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act
of 1940 made it a criminal offense for anyone to "knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise or teach the […] desirability or propriety of overthrowing the Government of the United States or of any State by force or violence, or for anyone to organize any association which teaches, advises or encourages such an overthrow, or for anyone to become a member of or to affiliate with any such association". Hundreds of Communists were prosecuted under this law between 1941 and 1957. Eleven leaders of the Communist Party were charged and convicted under the Smith Act in 1949. Ten defendants were given sentences of five years and the eleventh was sentenced to three years. All of the defense attorneys were cited for contempt of court
and were also given prison sentences. In 1951, twenty-three other leaders of the party were indicted including Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
, a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union
, who was removed from the board of the ACLU in 1940 for membership in a totalitarian political party. By 1957 over 140 leaders and members of the Communist Party had been charged under the law.
In 1952, the Immigration and Nationality, or McCarran-Walter, Act was passed. This law allowed the government to deport immigrants or naturalized citizens engaged in subversive activities and also to bar suspected subversives from entering the country.
The Communist Control Act of 1954
was passed with overwhelming support in both houses of Congress after very little debate. Jointly drafted by Republican John Marshall Butler
and Democrat Hubert Humphrey
, the law was an extension of the Internal Security Act of 1950, and sought to outlaw the Communist Party by declaring that the party, as well as "Communist-Infiltrated Organizations" were "not entitled to any of the rights, privileges, and immunities attendant upon legal bodies."
published an article by Hans Bethe
about thermonuclear fusion, but the United States Atomic Energy Commission
successfully ordered printed copies of the magazine destroyed, and a redacted version was published. The censorship was not disputed by Bethe.
Under the Invention Secrecy Act
of 1951 and the Atomic Energy Act
of 1956, patents may be withheld and kept secret on grounds of national security.
In 1979, the magazine The Progressive
was sued by the U.S. government (United States v. The Progressive
) and temporarily blocked from publishing an article that purported to reveal the "secret" of the hydrogen bomb
. The article was eventually published after another person published similar information and the government dropped the charges.
In 1997, Congress voted unanimously to add an amendment to a Department of Defense spending bill forbidding the distribution of instructions that teach "the making or use of an explosive, a destructive device, or a weapon of mass destruction" if those instructions are intended to assist in the actual building and use of such a device. This was known as Feinstein Amendment SP 419.
aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. Although covert operations have been employed throughout FBI history, the formal COINTELPRO operations of 1956-1971 were broadly targeted against organizations that were (at the time) considered to have politically radical elements, ranging from those whose stated goal was the violent overthrow of the U.S. government (such as the Weathermen
); non-violent civil rights groups such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference
; and violent groups like the Ku Klux Klan
and the American Nazi Party
. The founding document of COINTELPRO directed FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of these movements and their leaders.
software is regulated as a munition under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations
, although in recent years the regulations have relaxed, due in part to industry lobbying.
In 1995, Daniel J. Bernstein
challenged the regulations (see Bernstein v. United States
) on First Amendment grounds. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
ruled that software
source code
was speech protected by the First Amendment and that the government's regulations preventing its publication were unconstitutional. However, some regulations remain.
(FCC) regulates "indecent" free-to-air
broadcasting (both television and radio). Satellite, cable television
, and Internet outlets are not subject to content-based FCC regulation. It can issue fines if, for example, the broadcaster employs certain profane words
. The Supreme Court in 1978 in F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation upheld the commission’s determination that George Carlin’s classic “seven dirty words” monologue, with its deliberate, repetitive and creative use of vulgarities, was indecent. But the court at that time left open the question of whether the use of “an occasional expletive” could be punished. Radio personality Howard Stern
has been a frequent target of fines. This led to his leaving broadcast radio and signing on with Sirius Satellite Radio
in 2006. The Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy
increased the political pressure on the FCC to vigorously police the airwaves. In addition, Congress
increased the maximum fine the FCC may levy from US $268,500 to US $375,000 per incident.
The Supreme Court, in its 5-4 decision in Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, No. 07-582, on April 28, 2009, said it did not find the FCC's policy on so-called fleeting expletives either "arbitrary or capricious", thus dealing a blow to the networks in their efforts to scuttle the policy. But the case brought by Fox to the high court was a narrow challenge on procedural grounds to the manner in which the FCC handled its decision to toughen up its policy on fleeting expletives. Fox, with the support of ABC, CBS and NBC, argued that the commission did not give enough notice of nor properly explain the reasons for clamping down on fleeting expletives after declining to issue penalties for them in decades past. The issue first arose in 2004, when the FCC sanctioned, but did not fine, NBC for Bono's use of the phrase "fucking brilliant" during the Golden Globes telecast. The present case arose from two appearances by celebrities on the Billboard Music Awards. The first involved Cher, who reflected on her career in accepting an award in 2002: “I’ve also had critics for the last forty years saying I was on my way out every year. Right. So fuck em.” The second passage came in an exchange between Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie in 2003 in which Ms. Richie discussed the difficulties involved in cleaning cow shit off a Prada purse.
The majority decision, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, reversed the lower appellate court's decision that the FCC's move was "arbitrary and capricious." “The commission could reasonably conclude” he wrote “that the pervasiveness of foul language, and the coarsening of public entertainment in other media such as cable, justify more stringent regulation of broadcast programs so as to give conscientious parents a relatively safe haven for their children.” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dissenting, wrote that “there is no way to hide the long shadow the First Amendment casts over what the commission has done. Today’s decision does nothing to diminish that shadow.” Justice John Paul Stevens, dissenting, wrote that not every use of a swear word connoted the same thing: “As any golfer who has watched his partner shank a short approach knows,” Justice Stevens wrote, “it would be absurd to accept the suggestion that the resultant four-letter word uttered on the golf course describes sex or excrement and is therefore indecent... It is ironic, to say the least, that while the FCC patrols the airwaves for words that have a tenuous relationship with sex or excrement, commercials broadcast during prime-time hours frequently ask viewers whether they are battling erectile dysfunction or are having trouble going to the bathroom... The FCC’s shifting and impermissibly vague indecency policy only imperils these broadcasters and muddles the regulatory landscape.” For 30 years, the FCC has had the power to keep “indecent” material off the airwaves from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., and those rules “have not proved unworkable” Stevens added. Justice Breyer, dissenting, wrote that the law “grants those in charge of independent administrative agencies broad authority to determine relevant policy,” he observed. “But it does not permit them to make policy choices for purely political reasons nor to rest them primarily upon unexplained policy preferences.”Scalia’s majority opinion was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justices Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. and (for the most part) by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter, and Breyer dissented. Four justices wrote concurrences or dissents speaking only for themselves.
But the decision was limited to a narrow procedural issue and also sent the case back to the 2nd Court of Appeals in New York to directly address the constitutionality of the FCC's policy. The 2nd Court of Appeals is already on record in its 2007 ruling that it was "skeptical" that the policy could "pass constitutional muster." Scalia said that the looming First Amendment question “will be determined soon enough, perhaps in this very case.” The decision provided hints that the court might approach the constitutional question differently. Some dissenting justices and Justice Clarence Thomas, who was in the majority, indicated that they might be receptive to a First Amendment challenge. Thomas, in a concurrence, said he was “open to reconsideration” of the two cases that gave television broadcasters far less First Amendment protection than books, newspapers, cable programs and Web sites have.
The FCC is also responsible for permitting transmitters, to prevent interference between stations from obscuring each others' signals. Denial of the right to transmit could be considered censorship. Restrictions on low-power broadcasting
stations have been particularly controversial, and the subject of legislation in the 1990s and 2000s.
The Guardian
reported U.S. censorship
of U.S. media regarding a CIA employee implicated in murder in that "A number of US media outlets learned about Davis's CIA role but have kept it under wraps at the request of the Obama administration." Colorado station KUSA censored an online report indicating Davis worked for the CIA when the station "removed the CIA reference from its website at the request of the US government."
from regulation, but not "obscene" pornography. People convicted of distributing obscene pornography face long prison terms and asset forfeiture
.
In 1996, the Congress passed the Communications Decency Act
, with the aim of restricting Internet pornography
. However, court rulings later struck down many provisions of the law.
A widely publicized case of prosecuting alleged obscenity occurred in 1990, when the Cincinnati arts center agreed to hold an art show featuring the work of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe
. His work included several artistic nude photographs of males and was deemed offensive by some people for this reason. This resulted in the prosecution of the center and its director, who were later acquitted.
In the early 1990s, Mike Diana
became the first American artist to receive a conviction for obscenity for drawing cartoons that were judged legally obscene.
Child pornography
is censored in the United States. And even if not obscene, it is not considered protected speech, according to New York v. Ferber
.
On this basis, some American businesses have been punished for answering their customers' question about origin of their products.
Some pro-Israeli activists have construed the law as forbidding speech and expression that supports any boycott of Israel (as opposed to actions taken to comply with the requests of foreign entities to boycott Israel) whether foreign in origin or domestic, and asked the US Anti-Boycott Office to prosecute divestment campaigners against Israel
.
However, the law only forbids material participation in or material support of a boycott originated by a foreign nation or organization, not with a domestic boycott campaign, nor can the law be construed as forbidding speech that politically or morally (as opposed to materially) supports any boycott, whether foreign, or domestic. The law only prevents US organizations from being used by alien entities as agents of their foreign policy, when that foreign policy includes the pursuit of boycotting arrangements; it does not prevent US organizations or individuals from choosing how to spend or invest their money based on business or ethical considerations; it only forbids doing so as the result of a foreign entity's request. Material attempts to suppress speech through induction of state action under false pretenses, such as by claiming a domestic boycott campaign is foreign in origin may be unlawful, and may constitute conspiracy against civil rights, a Federal crime
, punishable by fine and imprisonment. (Such speech is considered to be core political speech under the US Constitution, and any state actions interfering with core political speech are subject to the strictest Constitutional scrutiny.)
which can constitute the basis of a private lawsuit. Although some states still carry criminal libel laws on the books, these are very infrequently used.
Since the 1964 decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan
, public figure
s like entertainers and politicians must prove actual malice
was intended as opposed to simple negligence to win a libel or slander suit. For instance, public officials cannot file a lawsuit if someone makes a caricature
of them or insults them.
Although it is difficult to win a libel case in the United States, it can still be an effective means of intimidation and deterrence, since defending oneself against a lawsuit is expensive and time consuming.
Persons engaged in legislative debate in Congress are granted complete immunity from libel and slander suits so long as they are speaking from the floor of the Senate or House of Representatives.
might be issued to prevent someone from disclosing information that would interfere with an ongoing court case. Though court documents are generally public information, record sealing
is sometimes used to prevent sensitive information (such as personal information, information about minors, or classified information) exposed by a court case from becoming public.
Such powers are subject to strict review by higher courts, and generally have been narrow compared to countries such as the United Kingdom
and Canada
.
The 1971 case Nebraska Press Assn. v. Stuart
established a high standard that must be met for courts to prevent media organizations from publishing information about an ongoing trial to preserve the defendant's right to a fair trial.
On January 4, 2007, US District Court Judge Jack B. Weinstein
issued a temporary restraining order
forbidding a number of activists and their organizations in the psychiatric survivors movement
, including MindFreedom International
and the Alliance for Human Research Protection from disseminating ostensibly leaked documents purporting to show that Eli Lilly and Company
knowingly concealed information on potentially lethal side-effects of Zyprexa
for years.http://www.mindfreedom.org/mfi-blog/topics/Zyprexakills The "Zyprexa documents" had been sealed by an earlier court order in a mass tort case; they were widely disseminated after Alaska attorney James Gottstein
issued a subpoena
for them in an unrelated case. The Electronic Frontier Foundation
came to the defense of one of the parties silenced by the restraining order to defend the First Amendment right of internet journalists to post links to relevant documents on wikis, blogs, and other web pages.http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/5628 While Eli Lilly maintains that the documents were obtained unlawfully and should not be part of the public domain, critics cite the leaked Pentagon Papers
as precedent for the right of individuals to report on the existence and contents of such documents, and in this particular case, maintain that court sealing of documents should never be allowed to protect individuals or corporations from criminal liability.http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_evelyn_p_070104_criminal_prosecution.htm
has strong copyright
laws, which result in the inability to republish copyrighted material without permission from the copyright owner, subject to criminal and civil penalties.
copyright law
passed unanimously on May 14, 1998, which criminalizes the production and dissemination of technology that allows users to circumvent technical copy-restriction methods. Under the Act, circumvention of a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work is illegal if done with the primary intent of violating the rights of copyright holders.
Although the Act contains an exception for research, the DMCA has had an impact on the worldwide cryptography
research community, because many fear that their cryptanalytic research violates, or might be construed to violate the law. The arrest of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov
in 2001, for alleged infringement of the DMCA, was a highly publicized example of the law's use to prevent or penalize development of anti-digital rights management
measures. Sklyarov was arrested in the United States after a presentation at DEF CON
, and subsequently spent several months in jail. The DMCA has also been cited as chilling to non-criminal inclined users, such as students of cryptanalysis
(including, in a well-known instance, Professor Felten and students at Princeton
), and security consultants such as the Netherlands based Niels Ferguson
, who has declined to publish information about vulnerabilities he discovered in an Intel secure-computing scheme because of his concern about being arrested under the DMCA when he travels to the United States.
Free speech lawsuits have resulted surrounding the publication of DeCSS
and the AACS encryption key
, both dealing with the "cracking" of copy-protected movies (on DVD
and Blu-ray Disc
/HD DVD
, respectively).
is sometimes seen as a pretext for reducing civil liberties
.
The NSA electronic surveillance program
and DARPA's Total Information Awareness
were two examples of post–September 11 government monitoring programs. Though intended to target terrorist behavior, critics worried fears about government monitoring might lead people to self-censorship.
A controversy also erupted concerning National Security Letter
s, issued by the federal government and not subject to prior judicial review. These letters demanded information the government asserted was relevant to a terrorism investigation, but also contained a gag order
preventing recipients from revealing the existence of the letter. Critics contend this prevents public oversight of government investigations, and allows unreasonable search and seizure to go unchecked. The American Civil Liberties Union complained that Section 505 of the USA PATRIOT Act
removed the need for the government to connect recipients to a terrorism investigation, widening the possibility for abuse.
The Protect America Act of 2007
was also controversial for its lack of judicial review.
Free speech zones (also known as First Amendment Zones, Free speech cages, and Protest zones) are areas set aside in public places for citizens of the United States engaged in political activism to exercise their right of free speech
. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution
states that "Congress
shall make no law... abridging... the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." The existence of free speech zones is based on court decisions that stipulate the government may regulate the time, place, and manner—but not content—of expression. TPM restrictions, as these are known, are only lawful when:
All TPM restrictions are subject to judicial review
. Unreasonable and unconstitutional TPM restrictions are and have been repeatedly vacated by various courts, and/or subjected to injunction
, restraining order
, and consent decree
. Unconstitutional TPM restrictions allow citizens whose freedom of speech has been violated to personally sue state agents acting under color of law responsible for the violations at hand in their individual capacity
, e.g. as private citizens, stripping them of any official capacity defense or defenses of sovereign immunity
. TPM restrictions related to core political speech are subject to the highest possible level of Constitutional scrutiny.
Free speech zones have been used at a variety of political gatherings. The stated purpose of free speech zones is to allegedly protect the safety of those attending the political gathering, or allegedly for the safety of the protesters themselves. Critics, however, suggest that such zones are "Orwellian
", and that authorities use them in a heavy-handed manner to censor protesters by putting them literally out of sight of the mass media
, hence the public, as well as visiting dignitaries. Though authorities generally deny specifically targeting protesters, on a number of occasions, these denials have been contradicted by subsequent court testimony. The American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) has filed a number of lawsuits on the issue.
On September 11, 2005 the American Civil Liberty Union reports:
In February 2004 a study from FAIR, the national media watchdog group, found that 76 percent of all 319 news sources appearing in stories about Iraq on the nightly network newscasts (ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News) in the month of October 2003 were current or former government or military officials.
On February 17, 2006 former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated, that "in this war, some of the most critical battles may not be fought in the mountains of Afghanistan or the streets of Iraq, but in the newsrooms in places like New York and London and Cairo and elsewhere. [...] While the enemy is increasingly skillful at manipulating the media and using the tools of communications to their advantage, it should be noted that we have an advantage as well, and that is, quite simply, that the truth is on our side, and ultimately, in my view, truth wins out. I believe with every bone in my body that free people, exposed to sufficient information, will, over time, find their way to right decisions."
The most prominent examples are those created by the United States Secret Service
for President
George W. Bush
and other members of his administration. While free speech zones existed in limited forms prior to the Presidency of George W. Bush, it has been during Bush's presidency that their scope has been greatly expanded. Free speech zones are and have been used in the past and in the present by institutions of higher education in the United States, which has led to organizations like the ACLU and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
to object to these as infringements of freedom of speech
, and of academic freedom
.
, United States Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) commissioner, put forward in an article in TV Guide
entitled The Silent Screen that "Censorship is a serious problem" in the United States, and that he agreed with the statements by various network officials that television was subject to it, but disputed "just who is doing most of the censoring". He stated that most television censorship is corporate censorship, not government censorship.
Croteau and Hoynes discuss corporate censorship in the news publishing business, observing that it can occur as self-censorship
. They note that it is "virtually impossible to document", because it is covert. Jonathan Alter
states that "In a tight job market, the tendency is to avoid getting yourself or your boss in trouble. So an adjective gets dropped, a story skipped, a punch pulled … It's like that Sherlock Holmes story — the dog that didn't bark. Those clues are hard to find.". The head of the Media Access Project
notes that such self-censorship is not misreporting or false reporting, but simply not reporting at all. The self-censorship is not the product of "dramatic conspiracies", according to Croteau and Hoynes, but simply the interaction of many small daily decisions. Journalists want to keep their jobs. Editors support the interests of the company. These many small actions and inactions accumulate to produce (in their words) "homogenized, corporate-friendly media". Croteau and Hoynes report that such corporate censorship in journalism is commonplace, reporting the results of studies revealing that more than 40% of journalists and news executives stating that they had deliberately engaged in such censorship by avoiding newsworthy stories or softening the tones of stories.
Nichols and McChesney opine that "the maniacal media baron as portrayed in James Bond
films or profiles of Rupert Murdoch
is far less a danger than the cautious and compromised editor who seeks to 'balance' a responsibility to readers or viewers with a duty to serve his boss and the advertisers". They state that "even among journalists who entered the field for the noblest of reasons" there is a tendency to avoid any controversial journalism that might embroil the news company in a battle with a powerful corporation or a government agency.
Self-censorship is not the only form of corporate censorship in the news and entertainment businesses. Croteau and Hoynes also describe examples of managers censoring their employees, subdivisions of conglomerates applying pressure upon one another, and pressure applied upon corporations by external entities such as advertisers.
One of the incidents of corporate censorship that Croteau and Hoynes find to be "the most disturbing" in their view is the news reporting in the U.S. of the Telecommunications Act of 1996
, which made fundamental changes to the limitations on ownership of media conglomerate
s within the U.S. and which was heavily lobbied for by media interests, and yet which was subject to, in Croteau and Hoynes words, "remarkably little coverage" by U.S. news media.
connections in the United States are not subject to technical censorship, such as content-control software
imposed by the government. However, private businesses, schools, libraries, and government offices may use filtering software at their discretion, and in such cases courts have ruled the use of such software does not violate the First Amendment (i.e. does not abridge freedom of speech).
removed WikiLeaks
from its servers on 1 December 2010 at 19:30 GMT. U.S. Senator
Joe Lieberman
, among the members of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee
who had questioned Amazon in private communication on the company's hosting of WikiLeaks and the illegally obtained documents, commended Amazon for the action; WikiLeaks, however, responded by stating on its official Twitter page that "WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free—fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe", and later that "If Amazon is so uncomfortable with the first amendment
, they should get out of the business of selling books".
Official efforts by the U.S. government to limit access to, conversation about, and general spread of the cables leaked by WikiLeaks were revealed by leading media organizations. A 4 December 2010 article by MSNBC
, reported that the Obama administration has warned federal government employees and students in educational institutions studying towards careers in public service that they must refrain from downloading or linking to any WikiLeaks documents. However, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley denied ordering students, stating, "We do not control private networks. We have issued no authoritative instructions to people who are not employees of the Department of State." He said the warning was from an "overzealous employee." According to a 3 December 2010 article in The Guardian, access to WikiLeaks has been blocked for federal workers. The U.S. Library of Congress
, the U.S. Commerce Department
and other government agencies have confirmed that the ban is already in place. Some Department of Homeland Security staff say the ban is hampering their work;"More damage will be done by keeping the federal workforce largely in the dark about what other interested parties worldwide are going to be reading and analysing." One official says that the ban apparently covers personal computers as well.
A spokesman for Columbia University
confirmed on 4 December that its Office of Career Services sent an e-mail warning students at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs to refrain from accessing WikiLeaks cables and discussing this subject on the grounds that "discourse about the documents would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information". However, this was quickly retracted on the following day. SIPA Dean John Henry Coatsworth wrote that "Freedom of information and expression is a core value of our institution, [...] thus, SIPA’s position is that students have a right to discuss and debate any information in the public arena that they deem relevant to their studies or to their roles as global citizens, and to do so without fear of adverse consequences."
The New York Times reported on 14 December that the U.S. Air Force
bars its personnel from access to news sites (such as those of The New York Times and The Guardian) that publish leaked cables.
On 18 December, the Bank of America
stopped handling payments for WikiLeaks. Bank of America is also blocking access to WikiLeaks from its internal network preventing employees from accessing WikiLeaks.
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...
, which is constitutionally protected by the First Amendment
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
to the United States Constitution
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
.
This freedom, though fundamental, has also been accompanied since its enshrinement with contest and controversy. For instance, restraints increased during periods of widespread anti-communist sentiment, as exemplified by the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It is also legal to express certain forms of hate speech
Hate speech
Hate speech is, outside the law, any communication that disparages a person or a group on the basis of some characteristic such as race, color, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, or other characteristic....
so long as one does not engage in the acts being described or urge others to commit illegal acts. However, more severe forms have led to people or groups such as the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
being denied certain marching permits or the Westboro Baptist Church
Westboro Baptist Church
The Westboro Baptist Church is an independent Baptist church known for its extreme stance against homosexuality and its protest activities, which include picketing funerals and desecrating the American flag. The church is widely described as a hate group and is monitored as such by the...
being sued, though the initially adverse ruling against the latter was later overturned on appeal in the US Supreme Court. Thus while legal history has defined certain finite limitations, courts have historically held in general that freedom of speech, in order to exist and function, necessarily extends to even the unpopular, offensive, and distasteful.
The First Amendment is a protection against censorship imposed by laws, but does not give protection against corporate censorship
Corporate censorship
Corporate censorship is censorship by corporations, the sanctioning of speech by spokespersons, employees, and business associates by threat of monetary loss, loss of employment, or loss of access to the marketplace.- TV Guide debate :...
, the sanctioning of speech by spokespersons, employees, and business associates by threat of monetary loss, loss of employment, or loss of access to the marketplace. Legal expenses can sometimes be a significant unseen restraint where there may be fear of suit for libel.
According to the Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
2010 Press Freedom Index
Press Freedom Index
The Press Freedom Index is an annual ranking of countries compiled and published by Reporters Without Borders based upon the organization's assessment of their press freedom records. Small countries, such as Andorra, are excluded from this report...
, the United States is currently 20th in the world in terms of press freedom. Certain forms of speech, such as obscenity and defamation, are restricted in major media outlets by the government or by the industry on its own.
History
A celebrated legal case in 1734-1735 involved John Peter ZengerJohn Peter Zenger
John Peter Zenger was a German-American printer, publisher, editor, and journalist in New York City. He was a defendant in a landmark legal case in American jurisprudence that determined that truth was a defense against charges of libel and "laid the foundation for American press freedom."-...
, a New York newspaper printer. He printed a newspaper that publicly bashed the ruler at this time, and he was taken to jail. He was taken to court and charged with seditious libel
Seditious libel
Seditious libel was a criminal offence under English common law. Sedition is the offence of speaking seditious words with seditious intent: if the statement is in writing or some other permanent form it is seditious libel...
for assailing the corrupt royal governor of New York. His lawyer Andrew Hamilton
Andrew Hamilton (lawyer)
Andrew Hamilton was a Scottish lawyer in Colonial America, best known for his legal victory on behalf of printer and newspaper publisher John Peter Zenger. This 1735 decision helped to establish that truth is a defense to an accusation of libel...
defended him well, and was made famous for his speech "truth cannot be libel." This court case paved the way for freedom of the press in the United States to be adopted in the constitution.
Sedition
There have been a number of attempts in the United States to forbid speech that has been deemed "seditiousSedition
In law, sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent to lawful authority. Sedition may include any...
". In 1798, President John Adams
John Adams
John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...
signed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts
Alien and Sedition Acts
The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the 5th United States Congress in the aftermath of the French Revolution's reign of terror and during an undeclared naval war with France, later known as the Quasi-War. They were signed into law by President John Adams...
, the fourth of which, the Sedition Act or "An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes against the United States" set out punishments of up to two years' imprisonment for "opposing or resisting any law of the United States" or writing or publishing "false, scandalous, and malicious writing" about the President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
or Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
(but specifically not the Vice-President
Vice President of the United States
The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...
). The act was allowed to expire in 1801 after the election of Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
, Vice President at the time of the Act's passage.
The Sedition Act
Sedition Act
Sedition Act may refer to:*Alien and Sedition Acts, including the Sedition Act of 1798, laws passed by the United States Congress*Sedition Act 1661, an English statute that largely relates to treason...
of 1917, passed in connection with the United States joining the Allied Powers in the First World War, was a controversial law that led to imprisonment of many prominent individuals for opposing the war or the draft. State laws prohibiting "sedition" were also passed and used to prosecute and persecute alleged "seditionists" during this period, including many people guilty only of being members of the Wobblies. However, the Sedition Act expired shortly after the end of the First World War; the state sedition acts, if in place, are undoubtedly unconstitutional under the Brandenburg
Brandenburg v. Ohio
Brandenburg v. Ohio, , was a landmark United States Supreme Court case based on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It held that government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless it is directed to inciting and likely to incite imminent lawless action...
doctrine of imminent lawless action
Imminent lawless action
"Imminent lawless action" is a standard currently used, and that was established by the United States Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio , for defining the limits of freedom of speech. Brandenburg clarified what constituted a "clear and present danger", the standard established by Schenck v....
as well as the former doctrine of clear and present danger
Clear and present danger
Clear and present danger was a term used by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in the unanimous opinion for the case Schenck v. United States, concerning the ability of the government to regulate speech against the draft during World War I:...
.
Local censorship
Until the early 20th century, the First Amendment was not held to apply to states and municipalities. Entities without any prohibition in their own charters were free to censor newspapers, magazines, books, plays, movies, comedy shows, and so on. Many did, as exemplified by the phrase "banned in BostonBanned in Boston
"Banned in Boston" was a phrase employed from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century to describe a literary work, motion picture, or play prohibited from distribution or exhibition in Boston, Massachusetts, USA...
."
The free speech decisions of the United States Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren
Warren Court
The Warren Court refers to the Supreme Court of the United States between 1953 and 1969, when Earl Warren served as Chief Justice. Warren led a liberal majority that used judicial power in dramatic fashion, to the consternation of conservative opponents...
, which served from 1953 to 1969, extended the protections of the First Amendment to local government, and brought much stricter standards of review for what government actions were acceptable.
The state of Maryland retained its movie ratings board an unusually long time, abandoning it in the 1980s in favor of the private MPAA's voluntary ratings scheme.
Anti-Abolitionist
Beginning in the 1830s and until the American Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, the US Postmaster General
United States Postmaster General
The United States Postmaster General is the Chief Executive Officer of the United States Postal Service. The office, in one form or another, is older than both the United States Constitution and the United States Declaration of Independence...
refused to allow the mails to carry abolitionist pamphlets to the South.
Near v. Minnesota and prior restraint
The 1931 Near v. MinnesotaNear v. Minnesota
Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 , was a United States Supreme Court decision that recognized the freedom of the press by roundly rejecting prior restraints on publication, a principle that was applied to free speech generally in subsequent jurisprudence...
case was the first to establish the doctrine that prior restraint
Prior restraint
Prior restraint or prior censorship is censorship in which certain material may not be published or communicated, rather than not prohibiting publication but making the publisher answerable for what is made known...
was in most cases unconstitutional. Prior restraint is censorship which prevents material from being published in the first place. The alternative form of censorship occurs as punishment for unlawful or harmful material already published, usually after having the opportunity to dispute the charge in court.
Smith Act
The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act of 1940 is a United States federal statuteAct of Congress
An Act of Congress is a statute enacted by government with a legislature named "Congress," such as the United States Congress or the Congress of the Philippines....
that made it a criminal offense for anyone to
It also required all non-citizen
Citizenship
Citizenship is the state of being a citizen of a particular social, political, national, or human resource community. Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities...
adult residents to register with the government; within four months, 4,741,971 aliens had registered under the Act's provisions.
The Act is best known for its use against political organizations and figures, mostly on the left. From 1941 to 1957, hundreds of socialists were prosecuted under the Smith Act. The first trial, in 1941, focused on Trotskyists
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
, the second trial in 1944 prosecuted alleged fascists
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
and, beginning in 1949, leaders and members of the Communist Party USA
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
were targeted. Prosecutions continued until a series of Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
decisions in 1957 threw out numerous convictions under the Smith Act as unconstitutional
Constitutionality
Constitutionality is the condition of acting in accordance with an applicable constitution. Acts that are not in accordance with the rules laid down in the constitution are deemed to be ultra vires.-See also:*ultra vires*Company law*Constitutional law...
. The statute itself, however, had not been removed from the books as of early-middle April 2008.
Film censorship
The first act of movie censorship in the United States was an 1897 statute of the State of Maine that prohibited the exhibition of prizefight films. Maine enacted the statute to prevent the exhibition of the 1897 heavyweight championship between James J. Corbett and Robert Fitzsimmons. Some other states followed Maine.In 1915, the US Supreme Court decided the case Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio
Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio
Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio, 236 U.S. 230 , was a court case decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1915, in which, in a 9-0 vote, the Court ruled that the free speech protection of the Ohio Constitution — which was substantially similar to the First...
in which the court determined that motion pictures were purely commerce and not an art, and thus not covered by the First Amendment
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
. This decision was not overturned until the Supreme Court case, Joseph Burstyn, Inc v. Wilson
Joseph Burstyn, Inc v. Wilson
Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495 , was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court which largely marked the decline of motion picture censorship in the United States...
in 1952. Popularly referred to as the "Miracle Decision", the ruling involved the short film "The Miracle", part of Roberto Rossellini
Roberto Rossellini
Roberto Rossellini was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Rossellini was one of the directors of the Italian neorealist cinema, contributing films such as Roma città aperta to the movement.-Early life:Born in Rome, Roberto Rossellini lived on the Via Ludovisi, where Benito Mussolini had...
's anthology film
Anthology film
An anthology film is a feature film consisting of several different short films, often tied together by only a single theme, premise, or brief interlocking event . Sometimes each one is directed by a different director...
L'Amore
L'Amore (film)
L'Amore is an anthology film directed by Roberto Rossellini starring Anna Magnani and Federico Fellini. The two segments are "Il Miracolo" and "Una Voce Umana", the latter based on the play The Human Voice by Jean Cocteau...
(1948).
Between the Mutual Film and the Joseph Burstyn decisions local, state, and city censorship boards had the power to edit or ban films. City and state censorship ordinances are nearly as old as the movies themselves, and such ordinances banning the public exhibition of "immoral" films proliferated.
Public outcry over perceived immorality in Hollywood and the movies, as well as the growing number of city and state censorship boards, led the movie studios to fear that federal regulations were not far off; so they created, in 1922, the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association (which became the Motion Picture Association of America in 1945), an industry trade and lobby organization. The association was headed by Will H. Hays
Will H. Hays
William Harrison Hays, Sr. , was the namesake of the Hays Code for censorship of American films, chairman of the Republican National Committee and U.S. Postmaster General from 1921 to 1922....
, a well-connected Republican lawyer who had previously been United States Postmaster General; and he derailed attempts to institute federal censorship over the movies.
In 1927 Hays compiled a list of subjects, culled from his experience with the various US censorship boards, which he felt Hollywood studios would be wise to avoid. He called this list "the formula" but it was popularly known as the "don'ts and be carefuls" list. In 1930, Hays created the Studio Relations Committee (SRC) to implement his censorship code, but the SRC lacked any real enforcement capability.
The advent of talking pictures
Sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
in 1927 led to a perceived need for further enforcement. Martin Quigley
Martin Quigley
Martin Quigley is a retired Irish sportsman. He played hurling with his local club Rathnure and with the Wexford senior inter-county team in the 1970s and 1980s...
, the publisher of a Chicago-based motion picture trade newspaper, began lobbying for a more extensive code that not only listed material that was inappropriate for the movies, but also contained a moral system that the movies could help to promote - specifically a system based on Catholic theology. He recruited Father Daniel Lord
Daniel A. Lord
Daniel Aloysius Lord, S.J. was a popular American Catholic writer. His most influential work was possibly in drafting the 1930 Production Code for motion pictures....
, a Jesuit priest and instructor at the Catholic St. Louis University, to write such a code and on March 31, 1930 the board of directors of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association adopted it formally. This original version especially was once popularly known to as the Hays Code, but it and its later revisions are now commonly called the Production Code
Production Code
The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral censorship guidelines that governed the production of the vast majority of United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Hollywood's chief censor of the...
.
However, Depression economics and changing social mores resulted in the studios producing racier fare that the Code, lacking an aggressive enforcement body, was unable to redress. This era is known as Pre-Code Hollywood.
An amendment to the Code, adopted on June 13, 1934, established the Production Code Administration (PCA), and required all films released on or after July 1, 1934 to obtain a certificate of approval before being released. For more than thirty years following, virtually all motion pictures produced in the United States and released by major studios adhered to the code. [1] The Production Code was not created or enforced by federal, state, or city government. In fact, the Hollywood studios adopted the code in large part in the hopes of avoiding government censorship, preferring self-regulation to government regulation.
The enforcement of the Production Code led to the dissolution of many local censorship boards. Meanwhile, the US Customs Department
U.S. Customs and Border Protection
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is a federal law enforcement agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security charged with regulating and facilitating international trade, collecting import duties, and enforcing U.S. regulations, including trade, customs and immigration. CBP is the...
prohibited the importation of the Czech film Ecstasy (1933
1933 in film
-Events:* March 2 - King Kong premieres in New York City.* June 6 - The first drive-in theater opens, in Camden, New Jersey.* British Film Institute founded....
), starring an actress soon to be known as Hedy Lamarr
Hedy Lamarr
Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-American actress celebrated for her great beauty who was a major contract star of MGM's "Golden Age".Lamarr also co-invented – with composer George Antheil – an early technique for spread spectrum communications and frequency hopping, necessary to wireless...
, an action which was upheld on appeal.
In 1934, Joseph I. Breen (1888–1965) was appointed head of the new Production Code Administration (PCA). Under Breen's leadership of the PCA, which lasted until his retirement in 1954, enforcement of the Production Code became rigid and notorious. Breen's power to change scripts and scenes angered many writers, directors, and Hollywood mogul
Media proprietor
A media proprietor is a person who controls, either through personal ownership or a dominant position in any media enterprise. Those with significant control of a public company in the mass media may also be called "media moguls", "tycoons", "barons", or "bosses".The figure of the media proprietor...
s. The PCA had two offices, one in Hollywood, and the other in New York City. Films approved by the New York PCA office were issued certificate numbers that began with a zero.
The first major instance of censorship under the Production Code involved the 1934 film Tarzan and His Mate
Tarzan and His Mate
Tarzan and His Mate is a Tarzan film based on the character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It was the second in the Tarzan film series to star Johnny Weissmuller....
, in which brief nude scenes involving a body double for actress Maureen O'Sullivan
Maureen O'Sullivan
Maureen Paula O’Sullivan was an Irish actress.-Early life:O'Sullivan was born in Boyle, County Roscommon, Ireland, the daughter of Roman Catholic parents Mary Lovatt and Charles Joseph O'Sullivan, an officer in The Connaught Rangers who served in The Great War...
were edited out of the master negative of the film. Another famous case of enforcement involved the 1943
1943 in film
The year 1943 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* January 3 - 1st missing persons telecast * February 20 - American film studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor films....
western The Outlaw
The Outlaw
The Outlaw is a 1943 American Western film, directed by Howard Hughes and starring Jane Russell. The supporting cast includes Jack Buetel, Thomas Mitchell, and Walter Huston. Hughes also produced the film, while Howard Hawks served as an uncredited co-director...
, produced by Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world...
. The Outlaw was denied a certificate of approval and kept out of theaters for years because the film's advertising focused particular attention on Jane Russell
Jane Russell
Jane Russell was an American film actress and was one of Hollywood's leading sex symbols in the 1940s and 1950s....
's breasts. Hughes eventually persuaded Breen that the breasts did not violate the code and the film could be shown.
Some films produced outside the mainstream studio system during this time did flout the conventions of the code, such as Child Bride
Child Bride
Child Bride, also known as Child Brides , is a 1938 film directed by Harry Revier. Set in a remote town in the Ozarks, it claims to be an attempt to draw attention to the lack of laws banning child marriage in many states...
(1938), which featured a nude scene involving 12-year-old actress Shirley Mills
Shirley Mills
Shirley Olivia Mills was an American actress. Mills' most notable role was in the 1938 film Child Bride, made when she was only twelve years old...
. Even cartoon sex symbol Betty Boop
Betty Boop
Betty Boop is an animated cartoon character created by Max Fleischer, with help from animators including Grim Natwick. She originally appeared in the Talkartoon and Betty Boop film series, which were produced by Fleischer Studios and released by Paramount Pictures. She has also been featured in...
had to change from being a flapper
Flapper
Flapper in the 1920s was a term applied to a "new breed" of young Western women who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior...
, and began to wear an old-fashioned housewife skirt.
In 1952, in the case of Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overruled its 1915 decision and held that motion pictures were entitled to First Amendment protection, so that the New York State Board of Regents could not ban "The Miracle", a short film that was one half of L'Amore
L'Amore (film)
L'Amore is an anthology film directed by Roberto Rossellini starring Anna Magnani and Federico Fellini. The two segments are "Il Miracolo" and "Una Voce Umana", the latter based on the play The Human Voice by Jean Cocteau...
(1948), an anthology film
Anthology film
An anthology film is a feature film consisting of several different short films, often tied together by only a single theme, premise, or brief interlocking event . Sometimes each one is directed by a different director...
directed by Roberto Rossellini
Roberto Rossellini
Roberto Rossellini was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Rossellini was one of the directors of the Italian neorealist cinema, contributing films such as Roma città aperta to the movement.-Early life:Born in Rome, Roberto Rossellini lived on the Via Ludovisi, where Benito Mussolini had...
. Film distributor Joseph Burstyn
Joseph Burstyn
Joseph Burstyn was a U.S. film distributor who specialized in the commercial release of foreign-language and American independent film productions. Born in Poland, he arrived in the U.S...
released the film in the U.S. in 1950, and the case became known as the "Miracle Decision" due to its connection to Rossellini's film. That in turn reduced the threat of government regulation that justified the Production Code, and the PCA's powers over the Hollywood industry were greatly reduced.
At the forefront of challenges to the code was director Otto Preminger
Otto Preminger
Otto Ludwig Preminger was an Austro–Hungarian-American theatre and film director.After moving from the theatre to Hollywood, he directed over 35 feature films in a five-decade career. He rose to prominence for stylish film noir mysteries such as Laura and Fallen Angel...
, whose films violated the code repeatedly in the 1950s. His 1953
1953 in film
The year 1953 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*September 16 — The Robe debuts as the first anamorphic, widescreen CinemaScope film.-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue- Awards :Academy Awards:A...
film The Moon is Blue
The Moon Is Blue
The Moon Is Blue is a 1953 American comedy film produced and directed by Otto Preminger. The screenplay by F. Hugh Herbert, based on his 1951 play of the same title, focuses on a young woman who meets an architect on the observation deck of the Empire State Building and quickly turns his life...
, about a young woman who tries to play two suitors off against each other by claiming that she plans to keep her virginity until marriage, was the first film to use the words "virgin", "seduce" and "mistress", and it was released without a certificate of approval. He later made The Man with the Golden Arm
The Man with the Golden Arm
The Man with the Golden Arm is a 1955 American drama film, based on the novel of the same name by Nelson Algren, which tells the story of a heroin addict who gets clean while in prison, but struggles to stay that way in the outside world. It stars Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak, Arnold...
(1955
1955 in film
The year 1955 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* November 3 - The musical Guys and Dolls, starring Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra, debuts.* June 27 - The last ever Republic serial, King of the Carnival, is released....
), which portrayed the prohibited subject of drug abuse, and Anatomy of a Murder
Anatomy of a Murder
Anatomy of a Murder is a 1959 American courtroom crime drama film. It was directed by Otto Preminger and adapted by Wendell Mayes from the best-selling novel of the same name written by Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker under the pen name Robert Traver...
(1959
1959 in film
The year 1959 in film involved some significant events, with Ben-Hur winning a record 11 Academy Awards.-Events:* The Three Stooges make their 190th and last short film, Sappy Bull Fighters....
) which dealt with rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
. Preminger's films were direct assaults on the authority of the Production Code and, since they were successful, hastened its abandonment.
In 1954
1954 in film
The year 1954 in film involved some significant events and memorable ones.-Events:*May 12 - The Marx Brothers' Zeppo Marx divorces wife Marion Benda...
, Joseph Breen retired and Geoffrey Shurlock was appointed as his successor. Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
noted "a decided tendency towards a broader, more casual approach" in the enforcement of the code.
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...
's Some Like It Hot
Some Like It Hot
Some Like It Hot is an American comedy film, made in 1958 and released in 1959, which was directed by Billy Wilder and starred Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and George Raft. The supporting cast includes Joe E. Brown, Pat O'Brien and Nehemiah Persoff. The film is a remake by Wilder and I....
(1959
1959 in film
The year 1959 in film involved some significant events, with Ben-Hur winning a record 11 Academy Awards.-Events:* The Three Stooges make their 190th and last short film, Sappy Bull Fighters....
) and Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
's Psycho (1960
1960 in film
The year 1960 in film involved some significant events, with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho the top-grossing release in the U.S.-Events:* April 20 - for the first time since coming home from military service in Germany, Elvis Presley returns to Hollywood, California to film G.I...
) were also released without a certificate of approval due to their themes and became box office hits, and as a result further weakened the authority of the code.
The Pawnbroker and the end of the Code
In the early 1960s, British films such as Victim (1961), A Taste of HoneyA Taste of Honey (film)
A Taste of Honey is a 1961 British film adaptation of the play of the same name by Shelagh Delaney. Delaney adapted the screenplay herself, aided by director Tony Richardson, who had previously directed the first production of the play...
(1961), and The Leather Boys
The Leather Boys
The Leather Boys is a 1964 British drama film about the rocker subculture in London featuring a gay motorcyclist. This film is notable as an early example of a film that violated the Hollywood production code, yet was still shown in the United States, as well as an important film in the genre of...
(1963) offered a daring social commentary about gender roles and homophobia
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
that violated the Hollywood Production Code, yet the films were still released in America. The American gay rights, civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
, and youth movements prompted a reevaluation of the depiction of themes of race, class, gender, and sexuality that had been restricted by the Code.
In 1964 The Pawnbroker
The Pawnbroker (film)
The Pawnbroker is a 1964 drama film, starring Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Brock Peters and Jaime Sánchez and directed by Sidney Lumet. It was adapted by Morton S. Fine and David Friedkin from the novel of the same name by Edward Lewis Wallant....
, directed by Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet was an American director, producer and screenwriter with over 50 films to his credit. He was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director for 12 Angry Men , Dog Day Afternoon , Network and The Verdict...
and starring Rod Steiger
Rod Steiger
Rodney Stephen "Rod" Steiger was an Academy Award-winning American actor known for his performances in such films as On the Waterfront, The Big Knife, Oklahoma!, The Harder They Fall, Across the Bridge, The Pawnbroker, Doctor Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night, and Waterloo as well as the...
, was initially rejected because of two scenes in which the actresses Linda Geiser
Linda Geiser
Linda Geiser is a Swiss film and television actress best known for her role in the Swiss TV series Lüthi und Blanc as Johanna Blanc....
and Thelma Oliver fully expose their breasts; and a sex scene between Oliver and Jaime Sánchez, which it described as "unacceptably sex suggestive and lustful." Despite the rejection, the film's producers arranged for Allied Artists to release the film without the Production Code seal and the New York censors licensed The Pawnbroker without the cuts demanded by Code administrators. The producers also appealed the rejection to the Motion Picture Association of America.
On a 6-3 vote, the MPAA granted the film an "exception" conditional on "reduction in the length of the scenes which the Production Code Administration found unapprovable." The exception to the code was granted as a "special and unique case," and was described by The New York Times at the time as "an unprecedented move that will not, however, set a precedent."
The requested reductions of nudity were minimal, and the outcome was viewed in the media as a victory for the film's producers. The Pawnbroker was the first film featuring bare breasts to receive Production Code approval. In his 2008 study of films during that era, Pictures at a Revolution, author Mark Harris wrote that the MPAA's action was "the first of a series of injuries to the Production Code that would prove fatal within three years."
When Jack Valenti
Jack Valenti
Jack Joseph Valenti was a long-time president of the Motion Picture Association of America. During his 38-year tenure in the MPAA, he created the MPAA film rating system, and he was generally regarded as one of the most influential pro-copyright lobbyists in the world...
became President of the MPAA in 1966, he was immediately faced with a problem regarding language in the film version of Edward Albee
Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...
's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (film)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a 1966 American drama film directed by Mike Nichols. The screenplay by Ernest Lehman is an adaptation of the play of the same title by Edward Albee...
(1966). Valenti negotiated a compromise: The word "screw" was removed, but other language, including the phrase "hump the hostess," remained. The film received Production Code approval despite having language that was clearly prohibited. The British-produced, but American financed film Blowup
Blowup
Blowup is a 1966 film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, his first English-language film.It tells of a British photographer's accidental involvement with a murder, inspired by Julio Cortázar's short story, "Las babas del diablo" or "The Devil's Drool" , translated also as Blow-Up, and by the life...
(1966) presented a different problem. After the film was denied Production Code approval, MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
released it anyway, the first instance of an MPAA member company distributing a film that didn't have an approval certificate. There was little the MPAA could do about it.
Enforcement had become impossible, and the Production Code was abandoned entirely.
Wartime censorship
During World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, and to a greater extent during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, war correspondent
War correspondent
A war correspondent is a journalist who covers stories firsthand from a war zone. In the 19th century they were also called Special Correspondents.-Methods:...
s accompanied military forces, and their reports were subject to advance censorship to preserve military secrets. The extent of such censorship was not generally challenged, and no major court case arose from this issue, and even the Supreme Court found it constitutional on the grounds that it "protected free speech from tyranny".
The Office of Censorship
Office of Censorship
The Office of Censorship was an emergency wartime agency set up on December 19, 1941 to aid in the censorship of all communications coming into and going out of the United States.-Overview:...
, an emergency wartime agency, heavily censored reporting during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. On December 19, 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8985, which established the Office of Censorship and conferred on its director the power to censor international communications in "his absolute discretion." Byron Price
Byron Price
Byron Price was director of the Office of Censorship for the United States government during World War II. For his role, he was recognized with a Pulitzer Prize in 1944. After the war he was appointed as the Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations. In 1946, President Harry S...
was selected as the Director of Censorship. However, censorship was not limited to reporting. "Every letter that crossed international or U.S. territorial borders from December 1941 to August 1945 was subject to being opened and scoured for details."
In later conflicts the degree to which war reporting was subject to censorship varied, and in some cases it has been alleged that the censorship was as much political as military in purpose. This was particularly true during the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
and the invasion of Grenada
Grenada
Grenada is an island country and Commonwealth Realm consisting of the island of Grenada and six smaller islands at the southern end of the Grenadines in the southeastern Caribbean Sea...
.
The executive branch of the federal government attempted to prevent the New York Times from publishing the top-secret Pentagon Papers
Pentagon Papers
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967...
during the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, warning that doing so would be considered an act of treason under the Espionage Act of 1917
Espionage Act of 1917
The Espionage Act of 1917 is a United States federal law passed on June 15, 1917, shortly after the U.S. entry into World War I. It has been amended numerous times over the years. It was originally found in Title 50 of the U.S. Code but is now found under Title 18, Crime...
. The newspaper prevailed in the famous New York Times Co. v. United States
New York Times Co. v. United States
New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 , was a United States Supreme Court per curiam decision. The ruling made it possible for the New York Times and Washington Post newspapers to publish the then-classified Pentagon Papers without risk of government censure.President Richard Nixon had...
case.
In 1991, during the U.S.-led UN invasion of Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
during the presidency of George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
, The Pentagon
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
placed restrictions on media coverage of the ground war to protect confidential military
Military
A military is an organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats. The military may have additional functions of use to its greater society, such as advancing a political agenda e.g...
information.
Such issues arose again during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq
2003 invasion of Iraq media coverage
The 2003 invasion of Iraq involved unprecedented media coverage. The coverage itself became a source of controversy, as media outlets were accused of bias, reporters were casualties of both Iraqi and American gunfire, and claims of censorship and propaganda became widespread.-U.S...
, when many embedded reporters accompanied soldiers as they made their way into the country. These reports were subject to censorship in that they were not allowed to reveal a unit's exact location.
Wartime censorship was a form of mass surveillance
Mass surveillance
Mass surveillance is the pervasive surveillance of an entire population, or a substantial fraction thereof.Modern governments today commonly perform mass surveillance of their citizens, explaining that they believe that it is necessary to protect them from dangerous groups such as terrorists,...
. For international communications, like those done by Western Union
Western Union
The Western Union Company is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. Its North American headquarters is in Englewood, Colorado. Up until 2006, Western Union was the best-known U.S...
and ITT, this mass surveillance continued after the wars were over. The Black Chamber
Black Chamber
The Cipher Bureau otherwise known as The Black Chamber was the United States' first peacetime cryptanalytic organization, and a forerunner of the National Security Agency...
received the information after WWI. After WWII NSA's
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
Project SHAMROCK
Project SHAMROCK
Project SHAMROCK, considered to be the sister project for Project MINARET, was an espionage exercise that involved the accumulation of all telegraphic data entering into or exiting from the United States...
performed a similar function.
Second Red Scare
McCarthyismMcCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
is the term describing a period of intense anti-Communist suspicion in the United States that lasted roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s.
The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act
Smith Act
The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act of 1940 is a United States federal statute that set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the U.S...
of 1940 made it a criminal offense for anyone to "knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise or teach the […] desirability or propriety of overthrowing the Government of the United States or of any State by force or violence, or for anyone to organize any association which teaches, advises or encourages such an overthrow, or for anyone to become a member of or to affiliate with any such association". Hundreds of Communists were prosecuted under this law between 1941 and 1957. Eleven leaders of the Communist Party were charged and convicted under the Smith Act in 1949. Ten defendants were given sentences of five years and the eleventh was sentenced to three years. All of the defense attorneys were cited for contempt of court
Contempt of court
Contempt of court is a court order which, in the context of a court trial or hearing, declares a person or organization to have disobeyed or been disrespectful of the court's authority...
and were also given prison sentences. In 1951, twenty-three other leaders of the party were indicted including Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was a labor leader, activist, and feminist who played a leading role in the Industrial Workers of the World . Flynn was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a visible proponent of women's rights, birth control, and women's suffrage...
, a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
, who was removed from the board of the ACLU in 1940 for membership in a totalitarian political party. By 1957 over 140 leaders and members of the Communist Party had been charged under the law.
In 1952, the Immigration and Nationality, or McCarran-Walter, Act was passed. This law allowed the government to deport immigrants or naturalized citizens engaged in subversive activities and also to bar suspected subversives from entering the country.
The Communist Control Act of 1954
Communist Control Act of 1954
The Communist Control Act was a piece of United States federal legislation, signed into law by Dwight Eisenhower on 24 August 1954, which outlawed the Communist Party of the United States and criminalized membership in, or support for the Party.-Background:...
was passed with overwhelming support in both houses of Congress after very little debate. Jointly drafted by Republican John Marshall Butler
John Marshall Butler
John Marshall Butler was a Republican member of the United States Senate, representing the State of Maryland from 1951-1963.-Early life:Butler was born in Baltimore, Maryland and attended Baltimore public schools...
and Democrat Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. , served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 38th Vice President of the United States. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and...
, the law was an extension of the Internal Security Act of 1950, and sought to outlaw the Communist Party by declaring that the party, as well as "Communist-Infiltrated Organizations" were "not entitled to any of the rights, privileges, and immunities attendant upon legal bodies."
Weapons proliferation
On March 15, 1950, Scientific AmericanScientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
published an article by Hans Bethe
Hans Bethe
Hans Albrecht Bethe was a German-American nuclear physicist, and Nobel laureate in physics for his work on the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. A versatile theoretical physicist, Bethe also made important contributions to quantum electrodynamics, nuclear physics, solid-state physics and...
about thermonuclear fusion, but the United States Atomic Energy Commission
United States Atomic Energy Commission
The United States Atomic Energy Commission was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by Congress to foster and control the peace time development of atomic science and technology. President Harry S...
successfully ordered printed copies of the magazine destroyed, and a redacted version was published. The censorship was not disputed by Bethe.
Under the Invention Secrecy Act
Invention Secrecy Act
The Invention Secrecy Act of 1951, codified at , is a body of United States federal law designed to prevent disclosure of new inventions and technologies that, in the opinion of selected federal agencies, present a possible threat to the national security of the United States.The U.S...
of 1951 and the Atomic Energy Act
Atomic Energy Act of 1954
The Atomic Energy Act of 1954, 42 U.S.C. § 2011 et seq., is a United States federal law that is, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, "the fundamental U.S...
of 1956, patents may be withheld and kept secret on grounds of national security.
In 1979, the magazine The Progressive
The Progressive
The Progressive is an American monthly magazine of politics, culture and progressivism with a pronounced liberal perspective on some issues. Known for its pacifism, it has strongly opposed military interventions, such as the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The magazine also devotes much coverage...
was sued by the U.S. government (United States v. The Progressive
United States v. The Progressive
United States of America v. Progressive, Inc., Erwin Knoll, Samuel Day, Jr., and Howard Morland is the name of a lawsuit against the magazine The Progressive by the U.S. government in 1979...
) and temporarily blocked from publishing an article that purported to reveal the "secret" of the hydrogen bomb
Teller-Ulam design
The Teller–Ulam design is the nuclear weapon design concept used in most of the world's nuclear weapons. It is colloquially referred to as "the secret of the hydrogen bomb" because it employs hydrogen fusion, though in most applications the bulk of its destructive energy comes from uranium fission,...
. The article was eventually published after another person published similar information and the government dropped the charges.
In 1997, Congress voted unanimously to add an amendment to a Department of Defense spending bill forbidding the distribution of instructions that teach "the making or use of an explosive, a destructive device, or a weapon of mass destruction" if those instructions are intended to assist in the actual building and use of such a device. This was known as Feinstein Amendment SP 419.
The COINTELPRO operations
The COINTELPRO (COunter INTELligence PROgram) was a program of the United States Federal Bureau of InvestigationFederal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. Although covert operations have been employed throughout FBI history, the formal COINTELPRO operations of 1956-1971 were broadly targeted against organizations that were (at the time) considered to have politically radical elements, ranging from those whose stated goal was the violent overthrow of the U.S. government (such as the Weathermen
Weatherman (organization)
Weatherman, known colloquially as the Weathermen and later the Weather Underground Organization , was an American radical left organization. It originated in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society composed for the most part of the national office leadership of SDS and their...
); non-violent civil rights groups such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr...
; and violent groups like the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
and the American Nazi Party
American Nazi Party
The American Nazi Party was an American political party founded by discharged U.S. Navy Commander George Lincoln Rockwell. Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, Rockwell initially called it the World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists , but later renamed it the American Nazi Party in...
. The founding document of COINTELPRO directed FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of these movements and their leaders.
Export of sensitive software
The export of cryptographyCryptography
Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...
software is regulated as a munition under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations
International Traffic in Arms Regulations
International Traffic in Arms Regulations is a set of United States government regulations that control the export and import of defense-related articles and services on the United States Munitions List...
, although in recent years the regulations have relaxed, due in part to industry lobbying.
In 1995, Daniel J. Bernstein
Daniel J. Bernstein
Daniel Julius Bernstein is a mathematician, cryptologist, programmer, and professor of mathematics at the University of Illinois at Chicago...
challenged the regulations (see Bernstein v. United States
Bernstein v. United States
Bernstein v. United States is a set of court cases brought by Daniel J. Bernstein challenging restrictions on the export of cryptography from the United States....
) on First Amendment grounds. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is a U.S. federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* District of Alaska* District of Arizona...
ruled that software
Computer software
Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....
source code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
was speech protected by the First Amendment and that the government's regulations preventing its publication were unconstitutional. However, some regulations remain.
Broadcast censorship
The Federal Communications CommissionFederal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
(FCC) regulates "indecent" free-to-air
Free-to-air
Free-to-air describes television and radio services broadcast in clear form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscription or one-off fee...
broadcasting (both television and radio). Satellite, cable television
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
, and Internet outlets are not subject to content-based FCC regulation. It can issue fines if, for example, the broadcaster employs certain profane words
Seven dirty words
The seven dirty words are seven English language words that American comedian George Carlin first listed in 1972 in his monologue "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television". The words include: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits...
. The Supreme Court in 1978 in F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation upheld the commission’s determination that George Carlin’s classic “seven dirty words” monologue, with its deliberate, repetitive and creative use of vulgarities, was indecent. But the court at that time left open the question of whether the use of “an occasional expletive” could be punished. Radio personality Howard Stern
Howard Stern
Howard Allan Stern is an American radio personality, television host, author, and actor best known for his radio show, which was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2005. He gained wide recognition in the 1990s where he was labeled a "shock jock" for his outspoken and sometimes controversial style...
has been a frequent target of fines. This led to his leaving broadcast radio and signing on with Sirius Satellite Radio
Sirius Satellite Radio
Sirius Satellite Radio is a satellite radio service operating in North America, owned by Sirius XM Radio.Headquartered in New York City, with smaller studios in Los Angeles and Memphis, Sirius was officially launched on July 1, 2002 and currently provides 69 streams of music and 65 streams of...
in 2006. The Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy
Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy
Super Bowl XXXVIII, which was broadcast live on February 1, 2004 from Houston, Texas on the CBS television network in the United States, was noted for a controversial halftime show in which Janet Jackson's breast, adorned with a nipple shield, was exposed by Justin Timberlake for about half a...
increased the political pressure on the FCC to vigorously police the airwaves. In addition, Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
increased the maximum fine the FCC may levy from US $268,500 to US $375,000 per incident.
The Supreme Court, in its 5-4 decision in Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, No. 07-582, on April 28, 2009, said it did not find the FCC's policy on so-called fleeting expletives either "arbitrary or capricious", thus dealing a blow to the networks in their efforts to scuttle the policy. But the case brought by Fox to the high court was a narrow challenge on procedural grounds to the manner in which the FCC handled its decision to toughen up its policy on fleeting expletives. Fox, with the support of ABC, CBS and NBC, argued that the commission did not give enough notice of nor properly explain the reasons for clamping down on fleeting expletives after declining to issue penalties for them in decades past. The issue first arose in 2004, when the FCC sanctioned, but did not fine, NBC for Bono's use of the phrase "fucking brilliant" during the Golden Globes telecast. The present case arose from two appearances by celebrities on the Billboard Music Awards. The first involved Cher, who reflected on her career in accepting an award in 2002: “I’ve also had critics for the last forty years saying I was on my way out every year. Right. So fuck em.” The second passage came in an exchange between Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie in 2003 in which Ms. Richie discussed the difficulties involved in cleaning cow shit off a Prada purse.
The majority decision, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, reversed the lower appellate court's decision that the FCC's move was "arbitrary and capricious." “The commission could reasonably conclude” he wrote “that the pervasiveness of foul language, and the coarsening of public entertainment in other media such as cable, justify more stringent regulation of broadcast programs so as to give conscientious parents a relatively safe haven for their children.” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dissenting, wrote that “there is no way to hide the long shadow the First Amendment casts over what the commission has done. Today’s decision does nothing to diminish that shadow.” Justice John Paul Stevens, dissenting, wrote that not every use of a swear word connoted the same thing: “As any golfer who has watched his partner shank a short approach knows,” Justice Stevens wrote, “it would be absurd to accept the suggestion that the resultant four-letter word uttered on the golf course describes sex or excrement and is therefore indecent... It is ironic, to say the least, that while the FCC patrols the airwaves for words that have a tenuous relationship with sex or excrement, commercials broadcast during prime-time hours frequently ask viewers whether they are battling erectile dysfunction or are having trouble going to the bathroom... The FCC’s shifting and impermissibly vague indecency policy only imperils these broadcasters and muddles the regulatory landscape.” For 30 years, the FCC has had the power to keep “indecent” material off the airwaves from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., and those rules “have not proved unworkable” Stevens added. Justice Breyer, dissenting, wrote that the law “grants those in charge of independent administrative agencies broad authority to determine relevant policy,” he observed. “But it does not permit them to make policy choices for purely political reasons nor to rest them primarily upon unexplained policy preferences.”Scalia’s majority opinion was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justices Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. and (for the most part) by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter, and Breyer dissented. Four justices wrote concurrences or dissents speaking only for themselves.
But the decision was limited to a narrow procedural issue and also sent the case back to the 2nd Court of Appeals in New York to directly address the constitutionality of the FCC's policy. The 2nd Court of Appeals is already on record in its 2007 ruling that it was "skeptical" that the policy could "pass constitutional muster." Scalia said that the looming First Amendment question “will be determined soon enough, perhaps in this very case.” The decision provided hints that the court might approach the constitutional question differently. Some dissenting justices and Justice Clarence Thomas, who was in the majority, indicated that they might be receptive to a First Amendment challenge. Thomas, in a concurrence, said he was “open to reconsideration” of the two cases that gave television broadcasters far less First Amendment protection than books, newspapers, cable programs and Web sites have.
The FCC is also responsible for permitting transmitters, to prevent interference between stations from obscuring each others' signals. Denial of the right to transmit could be considered censorship. Restrictions on low-power broadcasting
Low-power broadcasting
Low-power broadcasting is electronic broadcasting at very low power and low cost, to a small community area.The terms "low-power broadcasting" and "micropower broadcasting" should not be used interchangeably, because the markets are not the same...
stations have been particularly controversial, and the subject of legislation in the 1990s and 2000s.
The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
reported U.S. censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
of U.S. media regarding a CIA employee implicated in murder in that "A number of US media outlets learned about Davis's CIA role but have kept it under wraps at the request of the Obama administration." Colorado station KUSA censored an online report indicating Davis worked for the CIA when the station "removed the CIA reference from its website at the request of the US government."
Censorship of pornography
U.S. courts have ruled that the First Amendment protects "indecent" pornographyPornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
from regulation, but not "obscene" pornography. People convicted of distributing obscene pornography face long prison terms and asset forfeiture
Asset forfeiture
Asset forfeiture is confiscation, by the State, of assets which are either the alleged proceeds of crime or the alleged instrumentalities of crime, and more recently, alleged terrorism. Instrumentalities of crime are property that was allegedly used to facilitate crime, for example cars...
.
In 1996, the Congress passed the Communications Decency Act
Communications Decency Act
The Communications Decency Act of 1996 was the first notable attempt by the United States Congress to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In 1997, in the landmark cyberlaw case of Reno v. ACLU, the United States Supreme Court struck the anti-indecency provisions of the Act.The Act was...
, with the aim of restricting Internet pornography
Internet pornography
Internet pornography is pornography that is distributed by means of various sectors of the Internet, primarily via websites, peer-to-peer file sharing, or Usenet newsgroups...
. However, court rulings later struck down many provisions of the law.
A widely publicized case of prosecuting alleged obscenity occurred in 1990, when the Cincinnati arts center agreed to hold an art show featuring the work of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white portraits, photos of flowers and nude men...
. His work included several artistic nude photographs of males and was deemed offensive by some people for this reason. This resulted in the prosecution of the center and its director, who were later acquitted.
In the early 1990s, Mike Diana
Mike Diana
Michael Christopher "Mike" Diana is an underground cartoonist who became the first artist ever to receive a criminal conviction for obscenity for artwork in the United States.-Early life:...
became the first American artist to receive a conviction for obscenity for drawing cartoons that were judged legally obscene.
Child pornography
Child pornography
Child pornography refers to images or films and, in some cases, writings depicting sexually explicit activities involving a child...
is censored in the United States. And even if not obscene, it is not considered protected speech, according to New York v. Ferber
New York v. Ferber
New York v. Ferber, , was a United States Supreme Court decision. The Court ruled unanimously that the First Amendment right to free speech did not forbid states from banning the sale of material depicting children engaged in sexual activity....
.
Ban on material support for foreign boycotts
A law passed by the U.S. Congress in 1977 prohibits all U.S. persons, defined to include individuals and companies located in the United States and their foreign affiliates, from supporting the boycott of Israel and provides penalties for those who willingly comply with the boycott. The B.I.S. website states:On this basis, some American businesses have been punished for answering their customers' question about origin of their products.
Some pro-Israeli activists have construed the law as forbidding speech and expression that supports any boycott of Israel (as opposed to actions taken to comply with the requests of foreign entities to boycott Israel) whether foreign in origin or domestic, and asked the US Anti-Boycott Office to prosecute divestment campaigners against Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
.
However, the law only forbids material participation in or material support of a boycott originated by a foreign nation or organization, not with a domestic boycott campaign, nor can the law be construed as forbidding speech that politically or morally (as opposed to materially) supports any boycott, whether foreign, or domestic. The law only prevents US organizations from being used by alien entities as agents of their foreign policy, when that foreign policy includes the pursuit of boycotting arrangements; it does not prevent US organizations or individuals from choosing how to spend or invest their money based on business or ethical considerations; it only forbids doing so as the result of a foreign entity's request. Material attempts to suppress speech through induction of state action under false pretenses, such as by claiming a domestic boycott campaign is foreign in origin may be unlawful, and may constitute conspiracy against civil rights, a Federal crime
Federal crime
In the United States, a federal crime or federal offense is a crime that is made illegal by U.S. federal legislation. In the United States, criminal law and prosecution happen at both the federal and the state levels; thus a “federal crime” is one that is prosecuted under federal criminal law, and...
, punishable by fine and imprisonment. (Such speech is considered to be core political speech under the US Constitution, and any state actions interfering with core political speech are subject to the strictest Constitutional scrutiny.)
Libel
Libel and slander are generally considered civil wrongsCivil wrong
A civil wrong or wrong is a cause of action under the law of England and Wales. Tort, breach of contract and breach of trust are types of civil wrong.Something that amounts to a civil wrong is said to be wrongful....
which can constitute the basis of a private lawsuit. Although some states still carry criminal libel laws on the books, these are very infrequently used.
Since the 1964 decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 , was a United States Supreme Court case which established the actual malice standard which has to be met before press reports about public officials or public figures can be considered to be defamation and libel; and hence allowed free reporting of the...
, public figure
Public figure
Public figure is a legal term applied in the context of defamation actions as well as invasion of privacy. A public figure cannot base a lawsuit on incorrect harmful statements unless there is proof that the writer or publisher acted with actual malice...
s like entertainers and politicians must prove actual malice
Actual malice
Actual malice in United States law is a condition required to establish libel against public officials or public figures and is defined as "knowledge that the information was false" or that it was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not." Reckless disregard does not...
was intended as opposed to simple negligence to win a libel or slander suit. For instance, public officials cannot file a lawsuit if someone makes a caricature
Caricature
A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.Caricatures can be...
of them or insults them.
Although it is difficult to win a libel case in the United States, it can still be an effective means of intimidation and deterrence, since defending oneself against a lawsuit is expensive and time consuming.
Persons engaged in legislative debate in Congress are granted complete immunity from libel and slander suits so long as they are speaking from the floor of the Senate or House of Representatives.
Judicial orders
Individual judges have the power to order parties in their jurisdictions not to disclose certain information. A gag orderGag order
A gag order is an order, sometimes a legal order by a court or government, other times a private order by an employer or other institution, restricting information or comment from being made public.Gag orders are often used against participants involved in a lawsuit or criminal trial...
might be issued to prevent someone from disclosing information that would interfere with an ongoing court case. Though court documents are generally public information, record sealing
Record sealing
Record sealing is the practice of sealing or, in some cases, destroying court records that would otherwise be publicly accessible as public records. The term is derived from the tradition of placing a seal on specified files or documents that prevents anyone from reviewing the files without...
is sometimes used to prevent sensitive information (such as personal information, information about minors, or classified information) exposed by a court case from becoming public.
Such powers are subject to strict review by higher courts, and generally have been narrow compared to countries such as the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
.
The 1971 case Nebraska Press Assn. v. Stuart
Nebraska Press Assn. v. Stuart
Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart, 427 U.S. 539 , was a landmark Supreme Court of the United States decision in which the Court held unconstitutional prior restraints on media coverage during criminal trials.-Background:...
established a high standard that must be met for courts to prevent media organizations from publishing information about an ongoing trial to preserve the defendant's right to a fair trial.
On January 4, 2007, US District Court Judge Jack B. Weinstein
Jack B. Weinstein
Jack Bertrand Weinstein is a United States federal judge in the Eastern District of New York. Judge Weinstein was appointed in 1967 by President Lyndon Johnson. From 1980 to 1988, he served as chief judge of the district. On March 1, 1993, he took senior status; however, unlike some senior...
issued a temporary restraining order
Injunction
An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a court order that requires a party to do or refrain from doing certain acts. A party that fails to comply with an injunction faces criminal or civil penalties and may have to pay damages or accept sanctions...
forbidding a number of activists and their organizations in the psychiatric survivors movement
Psychiatric survivors movement
The psychiatric survivors movement is a diverse association of individuals who are either currently clients of mental health services , or who consider themselves survivors of interventions by psychiatry, or who identify themselves as ex-patients of mental health services...
, including MindFreedom International
MindFreedom International
MindFreedom International is an international coalition of over one hundred grassroots groups and thousands of individual members from fourteen nations. It was founded in 1990 to advocate against forced medication, medical restraints, and involuntary electroconvulsive therapy. Its stated mission is...
and the Alliance for Human Research Protection from disseminating ostensibly leaked documents purporting to show that Eli Lilly and Company
Eli Lilly and Company
Eli Lilly and Company is a global pharmaceutical company. Eli Lilly's global headquarters is located in Indianapolis, Indiana, in the United States...
knowingly concealed information on potentially lethal side-effects of Zyprexa
Olanzapine
Olanzapine is an atypical antipsychotic, approved by the FDA for the treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder...
for years.http://www.mindfreedom.org/mfi-blog/topics/Zyprexakills The "Zyprexa documents" had been sealed by an earlier court order in a mass tort case; they were widely disseminated after Alaska attorney James Gottstein
James Gottstein
James B. "Jim" Gottstein, JD, is an Alaska based lawyer who specializes in business matters and public land law, and is well known as an attorney advocate for people diagnosed with serious mental illness...
issued a subpoena
Subpoena
A subpoena is a writ by a government agency, most often a court, that has authority to compel testimony by a witness or production of evidence under a penalty for failure. There are two common types of subpoena:...
for them in an unrelated case. The Electronic Frontier Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
came to the defense of one of the parties silenced by the restraining order to defend the First Amendment right of internet journalists to post links to relevant documents on wikis, blogs, and other web pages.http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/5628 While Eli Lilly maintains that the documents were obtained unlawfully and should not be part of the public domain, critics cite the leaked Pentagon Papers
Pentagon Papers
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967...
as precedent for the right of individuals to report on the existence and contents of such documents, and in this particular case, maintain that court sealing of documents should never be allowed to protect individuals or corporations from criminal liability.http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_evelyn_p_070104_criminal_prosecution.htm
Copyright
The United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
has strong copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
laws, which result in the inability to republish copyrighted material without permission from the copyright owner, subject to criminal and civil penalties.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is an extension to United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
copyright law
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
passed unanimously on May 14, 1998, which criminalizes the production and dissemination of technology that allows users to circumvent technical copy-restriction methods. Under the Act, circumvention of a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work is illegal if done with the primary intent of violating the rights of copyright holders.
Although the Act contains an exception for research, the DMCA has had an impact on the worldwide cryptography
Cryptography
Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...
research community, because many fear that their cryptanalytic research violates, or might be construed to violate the law. The arrest of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov
Dmitry Sklyarov
Dmitry Vitalevich Sklyarov is a Russian computer programmer known for his 2001 arrest by American law enforcement over software copyright restrictions under the DMCA anti-circumvention provision...
in 2001, for alleged infringement of the DMCA, was a highly publicized example of the law's use to prevent or penalize development of anti-digital rights management
Digital rights management
Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...
measures. Sklyarov was arrested in the United States after a presentation at DEF CON
DEF CON
DEF CON is one of the world's largest annual computer hacker conventions, held every year in Las Vegas, Nevada...
, and subsequently spent several months in jail. The DMCA has also been cited as chilling to non-criminal inclined users, such as students of cryptanalysis
Cryptanalysis
Cryptanalysis is the study of methods for obtaining the meaning of encrypted information, without access to the secret information that is normally required to do so. Typically, this involves knowing how the system works and finding a secret key...
(including, in a well-known instance, Professor Felten and students at Princeton
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
), and security consultants such as the Netherlands based Niels Ferguson
Niels Ferguson
Niels T. Ferguson is a Dutch cryptographer and consultant who currently works for Microsoft. He has worked with others, including Bruce Schneier, designing cryptographic algorithms, testing algorithms and protocols, and writing papers and books...
, who has declined to publish information about vulnerabilities he discovered in an Intel secure-computing scheme because of his concern about being arrested under the DMCA when he travels to the United States.
Free speech lawsuits have resulted surrounding the publication of DeCSS
DeCSS
DeCSS is a computer program capable of decrypting content on a commercially produced DVD video disc. Before the release of DeCSS, there was no way for computers running a Linux-based operating system to play video DVDs....
and the AACS encryption key
AACS encryption key controversy
A controversy surrounding the AACS cryptographic key arose in April 2007 when the Motion Picture Association of America and the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator, LLC began issuing demand letters to websites publishing a 128-bit number, represented in hexadecimal as 09 F9 11...
, both dealing with the "cracking" of copy-protected movies (on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
and Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
/HD DVD
HD DVD
HD DVD is a discontinued high-density optical disc format for storing data and high-definition video.Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the standard DVD format...
, respectively).
War on Terrorism
The War on TerrorismWar on Terrorism
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
is sometimes seen as a pretext for reducing civil liberties
Civil liberties
Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right...
.
The NSA electronic surveillance program
NSA electronic surveillance program
An electronic surveillance program, whose actual name is currently unknown, was implemented by the National Security Agency of the United States in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. It was part of the President's Surveillance Program which was in turn conducted under the overall umbrella...
and DARPA's Total Information Awareness
Information Awareness Office
The Information Awareness Office was established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in January 2002 to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying surveillance and information technology to track and monitor terrorists and other asymmetric threats to national security,...
were two examples of post–September 11 government monitoring programs. Though intended to target terrorist behavior, critics worried fears about government monitoring might lead people to self-censorship.
A controversy also erupted concerning National Security Letter
National Security Letter
A National Security Letter is a form of administrative subpoena used by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation and reportedly by other U.S. Government Agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense. They require no probable cause or judicial oversight...
s, issued by the federal government and not subject to prior judicial review. These letters demanded information the government asserted was relevant to a terrorism investigation, but also contained a gag order
Gag order
A gag order is an order, sometimes a legal order by a court or government, other times a private order by an employer or other institution, restricting information or comment from being made public.Gag orders are often used against participants involved in a lawsuit or criminal trial...
preventing recipients from revealing the existence of the letter. Critics contend this prevents public oversight of government investigations, and allows unreasonable search and seizure to go unchecked. The American Civil Liberties Union complained that Section 505 of the USA PATRIOT Act
USA PATRIOT Act
The USA PATRIOT Act is an Act of the U.S. Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001...
removed the need for the government to connect recipients to a terrorism investigation, widening the possibility for abuse.
The Protect America Act of 2007
Protect America Act of 2007
The Protect America Act of 2007 , , is a controversial amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that was signed into law on August 5, 2007. It removed the warrant requirement for government surveillance of foreign intelligence targets "reasonably believed" to be outside of the...
was also controversial for its lack of judicial review.
Free speech zone
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...
. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
states that "Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
shall make no law... abridging... the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." The existence of free speech zones is based on court decisions that stipulate the government may regulate the time, place, and manner—but not content—of expression. TPM restrictions, as these are known, are only lawful when:
- they treat all speech equally - for example, persons on all sides of an issue must be treated the same;
- they are justified by a substantial, bona-fide public interest, such as crowd control;
- they do not substantively impede or dilute the speech at hand;
- there is no bad faith; there is no overt or ulterior motive by the authorities imposing a TPM restriction to suppress speech in general, or speech that they disagree with, in particular.
All TPM restrictions are subject to judicial review
Judicial review
Judicial review is the doctrine under which legislative and executive actions are subject to review by the judiciary. Specific courts with judicial review power must annul the acts of the state when it finds them incompatible with a higher authority...
. Unreasonable and unconstitutional TPM restrictions are and have been repeatedly vacated by various courts, and/or subjected to injunction
Injunction
An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a court order that requires a party to do or refrain from doing certain acts. A party that fails to comply with an injunction faces criminal or civil penalties and may have to pay damages or accept sanctions...
, restraining order
Restraining order
A restraining order or order of protection is a form of legal injunction that requires a party to do, or to refrain from doing, certain acts. A party that refuses to comply with an order faces criminal or civil penalties and may have to pay damages or accept sanctions...
, and consent decree
Consent decree
A consent decree is a final, binding judicial decree or judgment memorializing a voluntary agreement between parties to a suit in return for withdrawal of a criminal charge or an end to a civil litigation...
. Unconstitutional TPM restrictions allow citizens whose freedom of speech has been violated to personally sue state agents acting under color of law responsible for the violations at hand in their individual capacity
Individual capacity
In law, individual capacity is a term of art referring to one's status as a natural person, distinct from any other role. For example, an officer, employee or agent of a corporation, acting "in their individual capacity" is acting as himself, rather than as an agent of the corporation...
, e.g. as private citizens, stripping them of any official capacity defense or defenses of sovereign immunity
Sovereign immunity
Sovereign immunity, or crown immunity, is a legal doctrine by which the sovereign or state cannot commit a legal wrong and is immune from civil suit or criminal prosecution....
. TPM restrictions related to core political speech are subject to the highest possible level of Constitutional scrutiny.
Free speech zones have been used at a variety of political gatherings. The stated purpose of free speech zones is to allegedly protect the safety of those attending the political gathering, or allegedly for the safety of the protesters themselves. Critics, however, suggest that such zones are "Orwellian
Orwellian
"Orwellian" describes the situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free society...
", and that authorities use them in a heavy-handed manner to censor protesters by putting them literally out of sight of the mass media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
, hence the public, as well as visiting dignitaries. Though authorities generally deny specifically targeting protesters, on a number of occasions, these denials have been contradicted by subsequent court testimony. The American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
(ACLU) has filed a number of lawsuits on the issue.
On September 11, 2005 the American Civil Liberty Union reports:
- 30,000 National Security Letters Issued Annually Demanding Information about Americans: Patriot Act Removed Need for FBI to Connect Records to Suspected Terrorists
- [...] According to the Washington Post, universities and casinos have received these letters and been forced to comply with the demands to turn over private student and customer information. Anyone who receives an NSL is gagged - forever - from telling anyone that the FBI demanded records, even if their identity has already been made public.
- In New York and Connecticut, the ACLU has challenged the NSL provision that was dramatically expanded by Section 505 of the Patriot Act. The legislation amended the existing NSL power by permitting the FBI to demand records of people who are not connected to terrorism and who are not suspected of any wrongdoing. [...]
In February 2004 a study from FAIR, the national media watchdog group, found that 76 percent of all 319 news sources appearing in stories about Iraq on the nightly network newscasts (ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News) in the month of October 2003 were current or former government or military officials.
On February 17, 2006 former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated, that "in this war, some of the most critical battles may not be fought in the mountains of Afghanistan or the streets of Iraq, but in the newsrooms in places like New York and London and Cairo and elsewhere. [...] While the enemy is increasingly skillful at manipulating the media and using the tools of communications to their advantage, it should be noted that we have an advantage as well, and that is, quite simply, that the truth is on our side, and ultimately, in my view, truth wins out. I believe with every bone in my body that free people, exposed to sufficient information, will, over time, find their way to right decisions."
The most prominent examples are those created by the United States Secret Service
United States Secret Service
The United States Secret Service is a United States federal law enforcement agency that is part of the United States Department of Homeland Security. The sworn members are divided among the Special Agents and the Uniformed Division. Until March 1, 2003, the Service was part of the United States...
for President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
and other members of his administration. While free speech zones existed in limited forms prior to the Presidency of George W. Bush, it has been during Bush's presidency that their scope has been greatly expanded. Free speech zones are and have been used in the past and in the present by institutions of higher education in the United States, which has led to organizations like the ACLU and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is a non-profit group founded in 1999 and focused on civil liberties in academia in the United States...
to object to these as infringements of freedom of speech
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...
, and of academic freedom
Academic freedom
Academic freedom is the belief that the freedom of inquiry by students and faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts without being targeted for repression, job loss, or imprisonment.Academic freedom is a...
.
Corporate censorship
In 1969 Nicholas JohnsonNicholas Johnson
Nicholas Johnson is best known for his controversial term as a dissenting Federal Communications Commission commissioner, 1966-1973, and his book, How to Talk Back to Your Television Set...
, United States Federal Communications Commission
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
(FCC) commissioner, put forward in an article in TV Guide
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...
entitled The Silent Screen that "Censorship is a serious problem" in the United States, and that he agreed with the statements by various network officials that television was subject to it, but disputed "just who is doing most of the censoring". He stated that most television censorship is corporate censorship, not government censorship.
Croteau and Hoynes discuss corporate censorship in the news publishing business, observing that it can occur as self-censorship
Self-censorship
Self-censorship is the act of censoring or classifying one's own work , out of fear of, or deference to, the sensibilities of others, without overt pressure from any specific party or institution of authority...
. They note that it is "virtually impossible to document", because it is covert. Jonathan Alter
Jonathan Alter
Jonathan Alter is an American journalist and author who was a columnist and senior editor for Newsweek magazine from 1983 until 2011. He is currently a lead columnist for Bloomberg View, a new commentary website. He is also a contributing correspondent to NBC News, where since 1996 he has appeared...
states that "In a tight job market, the tendency is to avoid getting yourself or your boss in trouble. So an adjective gets dropped, a story skipped, a punch pulled … It's like that Sherlock Holmes story — the dog that didn't bark. Those clues are hard to find.". The head of the Media Access Project
Media Access Project
The Media Access Project is a non-profit group that promotes the public’s interest before Congress and the US court system. MAP grew out of a 1960’s lawsuit against the United Church of Christ and was eventually formed in 1972 in order to advance the rights of the public wanting to participate in...
notes that such self-censorship is not misreporting or false reporting, but simply not reporting at all. The self-censorship is not the product of "dramatic conspiracies", according to Croteau and Hoynes, but simply the interaction of many small daily decisions. Journalists want to keep their jobs. Editors support the interests of the company. These many small actions and inactions accumulate to produce (in their words) "homogenized, corporate-friendly media". Croteau and Hoynes report that such corporate censorship in journalism is commonplace, reporting the results of studies revealing that more than 40% of journalists and news executives stating that they had deliberately engaged in such censorship by avoiding newsworthy stories or softening the tones of stories.
Nichols and McChesney opine that "the maniacal media baron as portrayed in James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
films or profiles of Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
is far less a danger than the cautious and compromised editor who seeks to 'balance' a responsibility to readers or viewers with a duty to serve his boss and the advertisers". They state that "even among journalists who entered the field for the noblest of reasons" there is a tendency to avoid any controversial journalism that might embroil the news company in a battle with a powerful corporation or a government agency.
Self-censorship is not the only form of corporate censorship in the news and entertainment businesses. Croteau and Hoynes also describe examples of managers censoring their employees, subdivisions of conglomerates applying pressure upon one another, and pressure applied upon corporations by external entities such as advertisers.
One of the incidents of corporate censorship that Croteau and Hoynes find to be "the most disturbing" in their view is the news reporting in the U.S. of the Telecommunications Act of 1996
Telecommunications Act of 1996
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first major overhaul of United States telecommunications law in nearly 62 years, amending the Communications Act of 1934. This Act, signed by President Bill Clinton, was a major stepping stone towards the future of telecommunications, since this was the...
, which made fundamental changes to the limitations on ownership of media conglomerate
Media conglomerate
A media conglomerate, media group or media institution is a company that owns large numbers of companies in various mass media such as television, radio, publishing, movies, and the Internet...
s within the U.S. and which was heavily lobbied for by media interests, and yet which was subject to, in Croteau and Hoynes words, "remarkably little coverage" by U.S. news media.
Internet censorship
Private InternetInternet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
connections in the United States are not subject to technical censorship, such as content-control software
Content-control software
Content-control software, also known as censorware or web filtering software, is a term for software designed and optimized for controlling what content is permitted to a reader, especially when it is used to restrict material delivered over the Web...
imposed by the government. However, private businesses, schools, libraries, and government offices may use filtering software at their discretion, and in such cases courts have ruled the use of such software does not violate the First Amendment (i.e. does not abridge freedom of speech).
Wikileaks related censorship
Amazon.comAmazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
removed WikiLeaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
from its servers on 1 December 2010 at 19:30 GMT. U.S. Senator
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
Joe Lieberman
Joe Lieberman
Joseph Isadore "Joe" Lieberman is the senior United States Senator from Connecticut. A former member of the Democratic Party, he was the party's nominee for Vice President in the 2000 election. Currently an independent, he remains closely affiliated with the party.Born in Stamford, Connecticut,...
, among the members of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee
United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
The United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has jurisdiction over matters related to the Department of Homeland Security and other homeland security concerns, as well as the functioning of the government itself, including the National Archives, budget and...
who had questioned Amazon in private communication on the company's hosting of WikiLeaks and the illegally obtained documents, commended Amazon for the action; WikiLeaks, however, responded by stating on its official Twitter page that "WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free—fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe", and later that "If Amazon is so uncomfortable with the first amendment
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
, they should get out of the business of selling books".
Official efforts by the U.S. government to limit access to, conversation about, and general spread of the cables leaked by WikiLeaks were revealed by leading media organizations. A 4 December 2010 article by MSNBC
MSNBC
MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...
, reported that the Obama administration has warned federal government employees and students in educational institutions studying towards careers in public service that they must refrain from downloading or linking to any WikiLeaks documents. However, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley denied ordering students, stating, "We do not control private networks. We have issued no authoritative instructions to people who are not employees of the Department of State." He said the warning was from an "overzealous employee." According to a 3 December 2010 article in The Guardian, access to WikiLeaks has been blocked for federal workers. The U.S. Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
, the U.S. Commerce Department
United States Department of Commerce
The United States Department of Commerce is the Cabinet department of the United States government concerned with promoting economic growth. It was originally created as the United States Department of Commerce and Labor on February 14, 1903...
and other government agencies have confirmed that the ban is already in place. Some Department of Homeland Security staff say the ban is hampering their work;"More damage will be done by keeping the federal workforce largely in the dark about what other interested parties worldwide are going to be reading and analysing." One official says that the ban apparently covers personal computers as well.
A spokesman for Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
confirmed on 4 December that its Office of Career Services sent an e-mail warning students at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs to refrain from accessing WikiLeaks cables and discussing this subject on the grounds that "discourse about the documents would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information". However, this was quickly retracted on the following day. SIPA Dean John Henry Coatsworth wrote that "Freedom of information and expression is a core value of our institution, [...] thus, SIPA’s position is that students have a right to discuss and debate any information in the public arena that they deem relevant to their studies or to their roles as global citizens, and to do so without fear of adverse consequences."
The New York Times reported on 14 December that the U.S. Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
bars its personnel from access to news sites (such as those of The New York Times and The Guardian) that publish leaked cables.
On 18 December, the Bank of America
Bank of America
Bank of America Corporation, an American multinational banking and financial services corporation, is the second largest bank holding company in the United States by assets, and the fourth largest bank in the U.S. by market capitalization. The bank is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina...
stopped handling payments for WikiLeaks. Bank of America is also blocking access to WikiLeaks from its internal network preventing employees from accessing WikiLeaks.
See also
- Civil liberties in the United States
- First Amendment to the United States ConstitutionFirst Amendment to the United States ConstitutionThe First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
- Freedom of speech in the United StatesFreedom of speech in the United StatesFreedom of speech in the United States is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and by many state constitutions and state and federal laws, with the exception of obscenity, defamation, incitement to riot, and fighting words, as well as harassment, privileged...
- Freedom of the pressFreedom of the pressFreedom of the press or freedom of the media is the freedom of communication and expression through vehicles including various electronic media and published materials...
- List of cases argued by Floyd Abrams
- Media bias in the United StatesMedia bias in the United StatesMedia bias in the United States occurs when the media in the United States systematically presents a particular point of view. Claims of media bias in the United States include claims of liberal bias, conservative bias, mainstream bias, and corporate bias...
- United States obscenity law
- Political correctnessPolitical correctnessPolitical correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
- Prior restraintPrior restraintPrior restraint or prior censorship is censorship in which certain material may not be published or communicated, rather than not prohibiting publication but making the publisher answerable for what is made known...
- Westmoreland v. CBSWestmoreland v. CBSWestmoreland v. CBS was a $120 million libel suit brought by former U.S. Army Chief of Staff General William Westmoreland against CBS Television for the televising of a documentary entitled The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception, narrated by the investigative reporter, Mike Wallace. It was shown...
- United States defamation lawUnited States defamation lawThe origins of United States defamation law pre-date the American Revolution; one famous 1734 case involving John Peter Zenger established some precedent that the truth should be an absolute defense against libel charges. Though the First Amendment of the U.S...
Censorship in the past
- Alien and Sedition ActsAlien and Sedition ActsThe Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the 5th United States Congress in the aftermath of the French Revolution's reign of terror and during an undeclared naval war with France, later known as the Quasi-War. They were signed into law by President John Adams...
- Hays Code (Production Code)
- Comics Code AuthorityComics Code AuthorityThe Comics Code Authority was a body created as part of the Comics Magazine Association of America, as a tool for the comics-publishing industry to self-regulate the content of comic books in the United States. Member publishers submitted comic books to the CCA, which screened them for adherence to...
- Red ScareRed ScareDurrell Blackwell Durrell Blackwell The term Red Scare denotes two distinct periods of strong Anti-Communism in the United States: the First Red Scare, from 1919 to 1920, and the Second Red Scare, from 1947 to 1957. The First Red Scare was about worker revolution and...
Rating systems and industry self-regulation
- MPAA film rating systemMPAA film rating systemThe Motion Picture Association of America's film-rating system is used in the U.S. and its territories to rate a film's thematic and content suitability for certain audiences. The MPAA system applies only to motion pictures that are submitted for rating. Other media may be rated by other entities...
- Entertainment Software Rating BoardEntertainment Software Rating BoardThe Entertainment Software Rating Board is a self-regulatory organization that assigns age and content ratings, enforces industry-adopted advertising guidelines, and ensures responsible online privacy principles for computer and video games as well as entertainment software in Canada, Mexico and...
(ESRB)Entertainment Software Rating BoardThe Entertainment Software Rating Board is a self-regulatory organization that assigns age and content ratings, enforces industry-adopted advertising guidelines, and ensures responsible online privacy principles for computer and video games as well as entertainment software in Canada, Mexico and... - Comics Code AuthorityComics Code AuthorityThe Comics Code Authority was a body created as part of the Comics Magazine Association of America, as a tool for the comics-publishing industry to self-regulate the content of comic books in the United States. Member publishers submitted comic books to the CCA, which screened them for adherence to...
- TV Parental GuidelinesTV Parental GuidelinesThe TV Parental Guidelines system was first proposed on December 19, 1996 by the United States Congress, the television industry and the Federal Communications Commission , and went into effect by January 1, 1997 on most major U.S...
- Parental AdvisoryParental AdvisoryParental Advisory is a message affixed by the Recording Industry Association of America to audio and recordings in the United States containing excessive use of profane language and/or sexual references. Albums began to be labeled for "explicit lyrics" in 1985, after pressure from the Parents...
(music)
Related techniques of suppression
- Slander and libelSlander and libelDefamation—also called calumny, vilification, traducement, slander , and libel —is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government, or nation a negative image...
- PropagandaPropagandaPropaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
- Media manipulationMedia manipulationMedia manipulation is an aspect of public relations in which partisans create an image or argument that favours their particular interests. Such tactics may include the use of logical fallacies and propaganda techniques, and often involve the suppression of information or points of view by crowding...
Free speech advocates
- American Civil Liberties UnionAmerican Civil Liberties UnionThe American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
- Center for Democracy and TechnologyCenter for Democracy and TechnologyThe Center for Democracy & Technology is a Washington, D.C. based 501 non-profit public-interest group that works to promote an open, innovative and free Internet....
- Electronic Frontier FoundationElectronic Frontier FoundationThe Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
- International Freedom of Expression ExchangeInternational Freedom of Expression ExchangeThe International Freedom of Expression eXchange , founded in 1992, is a global network of around 90 non-governmental organisations that promotes and defends the right to freedom of expression....
- American Library AssociationAmerican Library AssociationThe American Library Association is a non-profit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 62,000 members....
- National Coalition Against CensorshipNational Coalition Against CensorshipThe National Coalition Against Censorship , founded in 1974, is an alliance of 50 national non-profit organizations, including literary, artistic, religious, educational, professional, labor, and civil liberties groups...
- Fans of X-Rated EntertainmentFans of X-Rated EntertainmentFans of X-Rated Entertainment is a United States based pornography fan organization founded by legendary adult film actor, director, and critic William Margold, and actress Viper...
- Index on CensorshipIndex on CensorshipIndex on Censorship is a campaigning publishing organisation for freedom of expression, which produces an award-winning quarterly magazine of the same name from London. The present chief executive of Index on Censorship, since 2008, is the author, broadcaster and commentator John Kampfner, former...
External links
- Administration of the Invention Secrecy Act
- Banned Magazine, the online journal of censorship and secrecy
- Fairness Doctrine Vetoed by both Ronald Reagan and G.H.W. Bush
- Music censorship incidents and issues in the US - reported by Freemuse
- Project Censorship
- The Birth of Movie Censorship in the United States