Missouri Governor Still Lying About Reporters Who Uncovered Ridiculous Bad State Computer Security; Still Insists They Were Hackers

from the lie-through-it,-mike dept

Missouri Governor Mike Parson is nothing if not committed to shamelessly lying. As you'll recall, after journalists from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ethically informed the state that the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) website included a flaw that revealed the social security numbers of over 600,000 state teachers and school administrators, Parson responded by calling the reporters hackers and vowing to prosecute them. Again, the DESE system displayed this information directly in the HTML, available for anyone to see if they knew where to look. That's not hacking. That's incompetent computer security.

So far, this has mostly played out as expected. A month after the revelations, DESE finally admitted it fucked up and apologized to the teachers and administrators and offered them identity fraud protection services. Then, last week, a public record request revealed something incredible, though perhaps not surprising: the FBI had already told Missouri officials that no hacking took place and DESE had prepared a statement (correctly) thanking the journalists for alerting them to their own fuck up... but that statement was ditched in favor of the nonsense one claiming that the journalists "hacked" the system. As we said in that last story, right at the end it notes that the Highway Patrol investigation, instigated by Parson, was "still active."

And now Parson is still standing by the ridiculous claim that the reporters are hackers. As for how he could possibly claim that after the revelation of internal documents on the situation? Well, Parson is trotting out the old "fake news" bullshit:

Asked at a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday whether, in light of the records provided by the state, he still believed the newspaper committed a crime, Parson said, “Most certainly I believe that. And most certainly I don’t know where that information’s coming from that you guys printed on that, whether it’s very accurate or not either. It has a tendency not to be very accurate a lot of times.”

Dude. What? Do newspapers make errors sometimes? Sure. But (1) from the very beginning it was abundantly clear that the problem here was with the state, not with the reporters, because under no circumstances should people be able to see the Social Security Numbers of other people in HTML and (2) if you're crying "fake news" about documents revealed under a public records law then you have to actually say what's fake. Is Parson claiming that his own government supplied fake information in response to a public records request? Because that would be fucked up. No, the truth is that Parson can't handle the fact that everyone knows he's just wrong, so he's going to lie right through it.

Missourians, you deserve better than a governor who will actively lie to you and put state employees at risk. Elect someone who is not a liar.

Filed Under: dese, ethical disclosure, hackers, html, journalism, mike parson, missouri, security research
Companies: st. louis post-dispatch

New York Times Lies About City's Murder Rate, NYPD's Clearance Rate To Sell Fear To Its Readers

from the don't-be-shitty dept

There's no reason for the New York Times to be this bad at reporting. It has plenty of resources and a slew of editors, and yet we get headlines like this one, which says something completely false:

If you can't read/see the screenshot, this is the original headline attached to an article that says nothing of the sort:

After Murders ‘Doubled Overnight,’ the N.Y.P.D. Is Solving Fewer Cases

Murders did not "double overnight." The murder rate in New York City hasn't doubled at all. Here's what the murder rate looks like according to the NYPD's own stats:

Want another look at the "doubling" the NYT falsely asserts in its headline? This comes via David Menschel, one of dozens challenging the Times' embrace of "bleeds/leads" rather than the truth:

So, where does this "murders doubled" quote come from? Who knows. The article doesn't provide a source for this supposed direct quote (remember, there are quotes around "Doubled Overnight"). At best, one can extrapolate the statement in the headline from a very different statement provided by a former Baltimore PD officer who is now the director of, um, something called the "John Jay College's NYPD Executive Master's Program."

Here's the NYT pull quote:

“The increase in shootings, that’s got to have a negative impact on clearance rates,” said Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “Their caseload literally doubled overnight. The odds are never great. That’s the unfortunate truth.”

The first part ("that's got to have...") is pure speculation. So is the rest of it. Someone asked a cop to offer a statement on cop stuff and received something exonerative from someone who used to be a cop but now teaches a masters program aimed at NYPD officers.

At best, it's maybe "caseloads doubled overnight." But it's unlikely this has happened either. And, if we're going to examine year-to-year crime rates, whatever increases officers in the Bronx (the article occasionally focuses on the family of a Bronx murder victim) have seen in caseloads and reported crimes still cruises along at historic lows for the city that never sleeps.

The headline and the article to a disservice to the purported subject: the survivors of an unsolved murder. Cops have never been great at solving murders and the NYPD is no exception. Unfortunately, the article also lies about clearance rates, which have historically been nowhere near what is claimed by the reporter.

In the years before the pandemic, the New York Police Department was solving nearly 90 percent of the murder cases in the city. But in 2020, as shootings and homicides increased, the percentage of homicides the police solved, a statistic known as the clearance rate, plummeted to around 60 percent, according to the department’s records.

This is just inexcusable. Anyone can pull up these records. The article is (deliberately?) vague about how many "years before the pandemic" it's talking about, but nothing in the NYPD's own records suggests it has maintained a 90% clearance rate for murders.

People cherry-picking data may find a quarter from the last three years that shows something approaching 90% clearance, but the NYPD as a whole has never consistently approached the number stated in this article. And the published numbers have their own problems. Every so often, precincts report clearance rates above 100%, which suggests these are rolling averages that simply add solved cases to the total, no matter how long it has been since the crime was reported.

I would normally use the phrase "to its credit" before reporting that the NYT altered its headline less than a day later to have at least one less lie in it. Instead of "murders doubled," it simply says "murders increased." But "credit where it's due" applies, and the NYT is so far in arrears in the credibility department that no credit will be issued. The NYT added quotation marks to quote something no one actually said and turned a NYPD-oriented professor's speculation into an eye-grabbing "fact."

Its extremely casual relationship with the truth does no favors for the purported subjects of its article: a tortured family hoping for some justice and closure following the senseless murder of their son in a local bodega. Instead of focusing attention on historically low clearance rates, the paper decided to sell fear to its readers. It irresponsibly claimed readers were surrounded by murderers and the police were powerless to stop them.

What the NYT should have asked is why clearance rates were so low, given the NYPD's considerable resources. And it should have asked why it takes a pretty white woman dying to motivate law enforcement to put those considerable resources to use. In the grand scheme of all things policing, nothing means less than the death of a young black man. And that's the real story -- one that the Times chose to ignore in favor of misrepresentations and law enforcement-friendly extrapolation.

Filed Under: journalism, murder rate, nyc, nypd
Companies: ny times

MLB Removes References To Current Players On MLB.com Due To Lockout

from the take-this! dept

Whether you're a baseball fan, or a sports fan in general, or not, regular readers here will know that we've covered aspects of many sports leagues and Major League Baseball in particular. As you'd expect with any major business like MLB, some of those posts have dealt with some nonsense intellectual property actions the league has undertaken, but many more of them have been positive articles about the forward-thinking folks at MLB when it comes to how they make their products available using modern technology. The league's website work has always been particularly good, whether it's been the fantastic MLB.TV streaming site the league operates, or even simply the base MLB.com site itself.

But that latter site has now become a petty pawn being played by MLB as part of the owner's lockout of players that just kicked off. For non-MLB fans, the quick version is this: the collectively bargained labor agreement between owners and players expired this week without a new agreement inked. As a result, the players are now locked out of team facilities by ownership. That last bit is important, because many people have been describing this as a labor strike. It isn't. At all. This is the owners refusing to let the players fulfill their duties. And as part of that, it seems, MLB released the following news update on its MLB.com website.

You may notice that the content on this site looks a little different than usual. The reason for this is because the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the players and the league expired just before midnight on Dec. 1 and a new CBA is currently being negotiated between the owners and the MLBPA.

Until a new agreement is reached, there will be limitations on the type of content we display. As a result, you will see a lot more content that focuses on the game’s rich history. Once a new agreement is reached, the up-to-the minute news and analysis you have come to expect will continue as usual.

It's unclear precisely what game MLB is playing with this move, but the end result is a website that is almost entirely bereft of content on any current MLB player. While the stats and standings from last season are still available in their tabs, the entire main page is now filled only with content about players no longer playing. Players that are on this year's Hall of Fame ballot, for instance, or check ins with Ichiro showing up at a high school to hit home runs. Interested in Vin Scully's thoughts on Gil Hodges? MLB.com has you covered! Want to know anything new about Kris Bryant or Mike Trout? You'll have to go elsewhere.

The league is making noises about having to comply with federal labor laws regarding the use of player likenesses in promotional or advertising material, but that doesn't make that much sense in the context of simply listing players currently under contract and on team rosters. Instead, this looks to be an attempt to, in some manner, punish current players by ripping away any fame or notoriety they might get via the MLB.com site. It's also notable that each individual team site gets feeds directly from MLB.com and those sites too are changed in a similar manner. Perhaps most strangely, the headshots of all current players have been removed and replaced by generic avatars of faceless heads

It could be that MLB is just playing it really, really safe on the labor laws situation... but I doubt it. This is more likely part of the overall strong-arm tactic by team owners that are crying poor to the players' union while beating the CBA buzzer to hand players millions and millions of dollars at the same time. And, just to add more to the mix, this all is happening at the same time MLB admitted it has been messing with the types of balls within the game, introducing multiple differently behaving balls in a league that is absolutely driven by statistics for what is supposed to be a uniform game.

Not exactly the ammo the owners need going into CBA negotiations, to be sure.

Filed Under: articles, baseball, collective bargaining agreement, journalism, labor agreement, lockout, mlb, news, players
Companies: mlb

When The FBI Shows Up At Your Door About Your Reporting, That's Intimidation

from the yikes dept

Having the government show up at your door to ask some questions about your reporting can be extremely unnerving. Zack Whittaker, the top notch cybersecurity reporter for TechCrunch got to experience the fun of that when the FBI showed up at his door over a year after he had published a story about a hacker dumping thousands of Mexican embassy documents from Guatemala after the Mexican embassy left the data exposed online.

As with many situations involving reporting on hacks and leaks, rather than focus on those actually responsible (often those who left the information exposed), law enforcement and the powers that be... often target the journalists. We saw that recently in Missouri where the governor called reporters hackers (and "fake news") for ethically disclosing that the state's elementary school agency had left teacher and administrator social security numbers exposed -- something the Department of Elementary and Secondary Educationapologized for weeks later (though it didn't apologize to the journalists).

For Whittaker, the experience was reasonably concerning:

I contacted Mexico’s consulate in New York for comment, as is standard practice when reporting a story. A spokesperson said the Mexican government took the matter “very seriously.” We published our story, and that seemed to be the end of it.

The FBI knock at my door a year later suggested it wasn’t. I declined to speak with the agents and closed the door.

After we published our story the Mexican government requested the help of the U.S. Department of Justice through diplomatic channels to investigate the hack and presumably try to identify the hacker. Because I had contact with the hacker, that must have made me a subject of interest to the Mexican authorities, hence the visit a year on.

A month after the house call, the Mexican government provided the FBI with a list of written questions it wanted us to answer, many of which were already answered in the story. Our response to the DOJ declined to provide anything more than what we had already published.

However, as Zack notes, even if he knew he hadn't done anything wrong, all of this is incredibly unnerving. Legal threats (unfortunately, and often ridiculously) now come with the territory of being a journalist, but the intimidation factor is very real -- and that can be super damaging for better informing the public. Indeed, it's often why the powerful -- be they governments or just wealthy people and companies -- make use of such intimidation tactics all the time:

We’ve rebuffed spurious legal demands before, but having federal agents on your doorstep simply for doing your job is certainly a new one for me. There has been no suggestion of wrongdoing, though it’s unsettling not knowing what view Mexico would take if I ever stepped foot on its soil.

But it’s the legal threats and demands that don’t make it to print that can have the most damage. Legal demands inherently have a silencing effect. Sometimes they succeed. Journalism can be risky and the newsrooms don’t always win. Left unchecked, legal threats can have a chilling effect that stifles both security research and journalism by making it legally toxic to work. That means the world is less informed and sometimes less secure.

Filed Under: fbi, intimidation, journalism, mexico, reporting, zack whittaker
Companies: techcrunch

Donald Trump Says He's Going To Sue The Pulitzer Committee If They Don't Take Away The NY Times And WaPo Pulitzers

from the dude,-come-on dept

Former President Donald Trump really has perfected every little thing he doesn't like being a grievance that he thinks he can sue over. It's funny because the Republican Party used to insist that "the left" was the party of victimhood, and yet in Trumpist world, they're always victims all the time, and always have to whine about how victimized they are. The latest is that Trump is literally threatening to sue the Pulitzer Prize Committee if they refuse to retract the 2018 prize that was given to the NY Times and the Washington Post for reporting on Russia's attempted interference with the 2016 Presidential campaign.

In a letter sent to the Pulitzer Committee, Trump lawyer Alina Habba has some, well, bizarre theories about basically everything.

... it is hereby demanded that the Pulitzer Prize Board take immediate steps to strip the New York Times and The Washington Post of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. Pulitzer Prize Board’s failure to do so will result in prompt legal action being taken against it. Please be guided accordingly.

What is the basis for this? Well, Trump is massively exaggerating the recent indictments of Michael Sussmann and Igor Danchenko by a grand jury working with Special Counsel John Durham. Sussmann was indicted for lying to the FBI regarding who he was representing when he spoke with the FBI about concerns associated with what was in the Steele dossier. The Danchenko indictment is moderately more damning in suggesting that he provided sketchy information that ended up in the Steele dossier, but that's got little to do with what the Pulitzer Prize was about.

While it's now fairly clear that parts of the Steele dossier were highly questionable (which was pretty much known from the beginning given the nature of how it was put together), Trumpworld has run ragged in arguing that this means anything at all about Russia's attempted interference is now disproved.

Except, that's not at all true, and Sussmann's indictment isn't even about any of that. The charges for Sussman are entirely related to whether or not he lied to the FBI in a single conversation, not about the dossier, but about who he represented. The charges against Danchencko are also about lying to the FBI, but regarding how he obtained certain information that was eventually passed on to Steele and ended up in the dossier.

But, in Trumpworld, these indictments are being used to claim that anything about "Russia" and the "2016 election" are completely disproved, despite that not being the case at all.

As highlighted in President Trump’s letter, it has recently become apparent that the subject articles were based on incontrovertibly false information provided by dubious sources who were maliciously attempting to mislead the public and tarnish our client’s reputation.

These sources are now facing criminal charges for their illicit conduct. On September 16, 2021, attorney Michael Sussman was charged with providing false statements to the FBI when he reported potential incidents of cooperation between our client and Russia. It has now been revealed that he was acting at the behest of the Clinton Campaign and that the accusations made by him were entirely fabricated.

Thereafter, on November 3, 2021, another analyst associated with the Clinton Campaign, Igor Danchenko, was charged with making false statements to the FBI. Specifically, it is alleged that Mr. Danchenko, who has been identified as a key contributor to the widely debunked “Steele Dossier,” lied to the FBI when he denied colluding with the Clinton Campaign in providing his contributions to same.

Despite these revelations, the Pulitzer Prize Board has failed to take any action to correct, retract, or otherwise repudiate the false reporting contained in the subject articles.

Except, as Liz Dye at Above The Law notes, the vast majority of the reporting that resulted in the Pulitzer Prize had nothing to do with the dossier.

Never mind that the prize encompassed a full year of coverage, including stories about Russia’s social media influence operation and coordination with Wikileaks, Don Jr.’s cack-handed effort to get dirt from a Russian spy — “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.” — Michael Flynn’s promise to the Russian ambassador to ditch sanctions once Trump got elected, and FBI Director James Comey’s dismissal. None of which has been disproven.

In fact, only one of the stories for which the prize was awarded had the dossier as its main focus. It referred to the document as “controversial” and acknowledged that the FBI might have paid investigator Chris Steele.

And, even if that wasn't true and the reporting was about the dossier, there's nothing that the committee did that gives a cause of action to Donald Trump. The Pulitzer Prize is, inherently, a subjective opinion of the committee. And that's the committee's own protected speech. The letter claims that the committee awarded the prize "erroneously" to the Times and the Post, but that's not his call, nor is it a legal issue. If the Pulitzers want to give an award to terrible reporting, that's it's fundamentally protected 1st Amendment right.

In short, Trump is saying that the Pulitzer Prize committee is not allowed to express an opinion, and such a threat is fundamentally both petty and censorial. What a sad little man, threatening bogus censorial lawsuits over petty little grievances based on someone's opinion he doesn't like.

Filed Under: donald trump, free speech, journalism, opinion, pulitzer prize, reporting, russia, steele dossier, threats
Companies: ny times, pulitzer committee, washington post

Yes, Even If You Think Project Veritas Are A Bunch Of Malicious Grifters, FBI Raid Is Concerning

from the press-freedom-matters dept

I am no fan of Project Veritas. They appear to be a group of malicious grifters, deliberately distorting things, presenting them out of context to fit (or make) a narrative. Even so (or perhaps, especially so), we should be extremely concerned about the FBI's recent raid on Project Veritas' founder James O'Keefe and two of his colleagues.

The FBI and DOJ say they're investigating the apparent theft of a diary belonging to Joe Biden's daughter, Ashley, which later ended up in Project Veritas' hands. But, as we've discussed for many years, there are serious 1st Amendment questions involved when the government is raiding the homes of journalists and seizing their computers, phones, and other records. I'm assuming that some of you are going to say that this shouldn't matter because O'Keefe and Veritas aren't "real journalists," and we'll get to that argument later. But the simple fact is that after many years (and multiple administrations lead by both parties) in which the DOJ felt free to collect journalist records, earlier this year, we were told that the DOJ was finally going to no longer sweep up journalist records (though even then it noted that didn't apply in cases where the journalists themselves were targets of a criminal investigation -- as was the case here).

However, unless there's really strong evidence indicating that Project Veritas was involved in the actual theft of the diary, if the organization was merely the recipient of that diary, then these raids raise many, many concerns about violations of press freedoms and the use of law enforcement to intimidate the press.

Many others seem to be similarly concerned, as this is raising a lot of alarm bells for those who work on press freedom issues:

“This is just beyond belief,” said University of Minnesota law professor Jane Kirtley, a former executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “I’m not a big fan of Project Veritas, but this is just over the top. I hope they get a serious reprimand from the court because I think this is just wrong.”

The ACLU is also quite concerned:

“Project Veritas has engaged in disgraceful deceptions, and reasonable observers might not consider their activities to be journalism at all. Nevertheless, the precedent set in this case could have serious consequences for press freedom. Unless the government had good reason to believe that Project Veritas employees were directly involved in the criminal theft of the diary, it should not have subjected them to invasive searches and seizures. We urge the court to appoint a special master to ensure that law enforcement officers review only those materials that were lawfully seized and that are directly relevant to a legitimate criminal investigation.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists is equally worried:

“While we do not endorse some of the tactics Project Veritas employs, the FBI’s recent raids on the organization’s founder and his associates represent a concerning overreach by law enforcement,” said CPJ U.S. and Canada Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “The government must provide a clear link between members of Project Veritas and alleged criminal activity before searching their homes for information about source material. Conducting raids without this kind of link sets a dangerous precedent that could allow law enforcement to search and confiscate reporters’ unpublished source material in vague attempts to identify whistleblowers.”

But, yes, as mentioned earlier, I'm sure some people are saying that Project Veritas and James O'Keefe aren't "real" journalists. And, I'm certainly sympathetic to the idea that O'Keefe makes a mockery of actual journalism with his out of context and extremely misleading releases. But, part of having a "freedom of the press" means not allowing the government to determine who is and who is not press. Because that power alone creates massive limits on a free press. If the government can unilaterally decide that certain organizations are not "really" journalists, then that enables them to punish any news organization they want. Think how a Trump administration might use that power against the NY Times or CNN.

It's okay to call out Project Veritas for their ridiculous and misleading reporting. You can personally believe that they are doing dangerous work. But the government cannot unilaterally declare them not to be press in order to raid homes and seize notes -- because if they can, they can do that to any journalist.

Another bit of pushback I heard on this was that mere "receipt of stolen goods" is, itself, a crime, and that somehow makes it okay to raid O'Keefe and his colleagues. Again, though, that would set a hugely dangerous precedent. Remember, the Nixon administration went after the NY Times and the Washington Post for receiving the Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg. Tons of whistleblowers and leakers hand over documents to journalists that they have no legal right to copy or take (and they may face legal consequences in doing so). But the media who receives those works should not be subject to raids and intimidation from the government. Even if they're a bunch of ridiculous grifters intent on publishing utter nonsense.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, ashley biden, doj, fbi, free speech, james o'keefe, journalism, raids, reporting, source protection
Companies: project veritas

Mexican Businessman Arrested For Using NSO Spyware To Target A Journalist

from the NSO's-long,-international-SEO-nightmare-continues dept

No news is the only good news for Israeli tech company NSO Group. The problem is it's impossible to generate no news when you can't go more than a few days without generating more bad news.

Since the leak of data showing its customers were targeting journalists, activists, religious leaders, and other government officials with powerful malware capable of intercepting cellphone communications, the headlines NSO has racked up range from bad to worse to nightmarish.

Multiple countries are now following up on investigations performed by entities like CitizenLab, performing investigations of their own to determine whether they've been breached by NSO's malware or if government customers have violated rights. The United States has effectively blacklisted the company, forbidding US government agencies from buying its products and US exploit developers from selling to NSO.

One country was host to a large percentage of the numbers on the leaked list of potential NSO Group malware targets: Mexico. 15,000 of the 50,000 phone numbers on the list were located in that country. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mexico is home to the first arrest related to abuse of NSO spyware.

Mexican prosecutors said Monday they have arrested a businessman on charges he used the Pegasus spyware to spy on a journalist.

[...]

A federal official not authorized to be quoted by name said the suspect is Juan Carlos García Rivera, who has been linked to the company Proyectos y Diseños VME and Grupo KBH. He was detained on Nov. 1.

Mexico buys a lot of spyware from NSO. The AP report says the Mexican government spent $61 million on Pegasus licenses (NSO's most popular -- and most powerful -- phone exploit) from 2006 to 2018. That quote was given to the Associated Press in July. It has since been updated.

Last week, the government’s top anti-money laundering investigator said officials from the two previous administrations had spent about $300 million in government money to purchase spyware. But that figure may reflect all spyware and surveillance purchases, or may include yet-unidentified contracts.

Supposedly the Mexican government has kicked the spyware habit. Current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected in 2018 and promised never to use exploits like these. It remains to be seen if that promise has been broken or will be broken in the future. According to the head of the government's Financial Intelligence Unit -- which monitors government financial transactions for evidence of corruption -- "no transactions" related to the purchase of spyware have been detected.

That's reassuring but not nearly as reassuring as a statement from a non-government entity would be, given the Mexican government's long, mostly unsuccessful, battle with internal corruption.

NSO has, of course, responded with another nonsensical non-denial of the facts at hand:

As stated in the past, NSO’s technologies are only sold to vetted and approved government entities, and cannot be operated by private companies or individuals. We regret to see that, over and over again, the company’s name is mentioned in the media in events that has nothing to do with NSO, directly or indirectly.

This certainly looks like the software was "operated" by a private individual. Maybe that first and pretty damn clear impression will change when more facts are in. Just because NSO forbids the use by private individuals doesn't mean private individuals with access to malware are somehow incapable of deploying it. And, just to be pedantic because NSO insists on pedantry, when issuing defensive statements, this report very definitely has something to do with NSO indirectly. Being angry about the endless stream of bad news doesn't make NSO right and everyone else wrong about it's at least tacit involvement with misuse of its products by its customers.

Filed Under: journalism, malware, mexico, spyware, surveillance
Companies: nso group

Federal Government Announces Legal Defense Fund For Journalists Facing Bogus Defamation Lawsuits From Government Officials

from the shutting-down-international-bullies dept

While we wait for Congress to get around to protecting journalists, critics, and others facing bogus defamation lawsuits with a federal anti-SLAPP law, it's good to know at least one federal agency is doing something to protect journalists from litigation deployed solely to silence them.

In comments to a conference at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Samantha Power, said the federal government is creating a legal defense fund to protect journalists all over the world from bogus defamation lawsuits filed by subjects of news coverage and/or targets of criticism.

Today, I’m pleased to announce an initiative that responds to a request from a group of independent journalists I met with during my very first week at USAID. It turns out that autocrats and oligarchs often employ a crude but effective tactic to kill stories they don’t like: they sue reporters until those reporters abandon stories or go out of business.

As a result, we are launching a global Defamation Defense Fund to protect journalists against lawsuits that are designed to deter them from doing their work. We will offer them courage to survive coverage —excuse me I hope courage as well but they don’t need any courage these journalists—to survive defamation claims or deter autocrats and oligarchs from trying to sue them out of business in the first place. To counter the ever-changing threats to democracy, because they’re evolving, we depend on this sort of innovation.

The speech, while long, was a little light on details. Completely light, actually. There are no more details on the planned "Defamation Defense Fund" on USAID's site or anywhere else at the moment. It's unclear how the fund will determine which lawsuits are frivolous enough to warrant access to the legal defense fund or which countries' journalists will be able to avail themselves of this assistance. I mean, in some countries, suing journalists for defamation is pretty much the national pastime. And some governments will be extremely unhappy one of their censorial weapons of choice is being blunted by US intervention.

There's also no indication American journalists will be able to use this when US-based authoritarians decide to intimidate journalists with frivolous lawsuits. That remains a problem in this country despite our rather robust speech protections. Hassling someone into misery (if not poverty) only requires a small investment ($402 at the federal level) from people (including public servants) who don't like to be publicly criticized. Until a federal anti-SLAPP law is put in place, small-a authoritarians are free to shop around for venues without robust anti-SLAPP protections -- and there are several of those still remaining in the United States.

But this is a timely announcement and potentially good news for journalists like the Guardian's Lorenzo Tondo, who has been sued for a second time by Italian prosecutor Calogero Ferrara over Tondo's coverage of the prosecutor's questionable actions. Then there are the journalists being sued by the aggrieved governments of entire countries that claim they've never misused spyware sold to them by NSO Group to target religious leaders, activists, and… journalists. And with new reporting on financial wrongdoing implicating government officials all over the world, more lawsuits bogusly claiming libel are likely on their way. Hopefully, this fund will also act as a deterrent to future lawsuits, putting would-be plaintiffs on notice that the US government will now be backing their critics.

Filed Under: defamation, free speech, journalism, legal defense fund, samantha power, usaid