This company rates news sites’ credibility. The right wants it stopped.; The Washington Post, December 24, 2024

Will Oremus

 and 

Naomi Nix

, The Washington Post; This company rates news sites’ credibility. The right wants it stopped.

"At a time when social media, podcasts and partisan outlets are displacing the mainstream media as news sources, the battle over NewsGuard’s future is symptomatic of a broader societal struggle over who gets to arbitrate the truth."

Elon Musk worries free speech advocates with his calls to prosecute researchers and critics; NBC News, November 12, 2024

 David Ingram and Lora Kolodny, CNBC , NBC News; Elon Musk worries free speech advocates with his calls to prosecute researchers and critics

"Musk, the world’s richest person, has in the past two years called for several of his opponents to be prosecuted, and it’s something that free speech advocates say they could overlook if he were only an ordinary private citizen. 

But now that Musk is gaining political power as a close ally of President-elect Donald Trump, his demands for criminal charges against critics are much more worrisome, according to scholars and groups devoted to the First Amendment...

According to NBC News' review of Musk’s public statements, there’s an established pattern of him attacking nonprofit groups, journalists and others who produce information that he disagrees with or that may not be helpful to his goals or image — a pattern that runs counter to frequent vows by him that he’s a defender of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech."

'Echo Is Not Spying On You,' Amazon Lawyer Declares; Inside Counsel, May 12, 2017

C. Ryan Barber, Inside Counsel; 

'Echo Is Not Spying On You,' Amazon Lawyer Declares

"We designed the Echo devices very intentionally to only listen when spoken to … and also be incredibly conspicuous when it is listening,” [Ryan] McCrate said, referring to the ring of LED lights that flash when Alexa perks up.

McCrate’s brief remarks on the panel sounded at times like a promotional pitch touting the lengths the company took to protect consumer privacy. The Echo, he said, was inspired by Star Trek—and Amazon knew that its customers would be familiar with a virtual assistant as a science-fiction concept. But the company, he added, also realized there would be “well-founded” concerns about a product like the Echo."

Mugged by a Mug Shot Online; New York Times, 10/5/13

David Segal, New York Times; Mugged by a Mug Shot Online: "It was only a matter of time before the Internet started to monetize humiliation. In this case, the time was early 2011, when mug-shot Web sites started popping up to turn the most embarrassing photograph of anyone’s life into cash. The sites are perfectly legal, and they get financial oxygen the same way as other online businesses — through credit card companies and PayPal. Some states, though, are looking for ways to curb them. The governor of Oregon signed a bill this summer that gives such sites 30 days to take down the image, free of charge, of anyone who can prove that he or she was exonerated or whose record has been expunged. Georgia passed a similar law in May. Utah prohibits county sheriffs from giving out booking photographs to a site that will charge to delete them. But as legislators draft laws, they are finding plenty of resistance, much of it from journalists who assert that public records should be just that: public. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press argues that any restriction on booking photographs raises First Amendment issues and impinges on editors’ right to determine what is newsworthy. That right was recently exercised by newspapers and Web sites around the world when the public got its first look at Aaron Alexis, the Navy Yard gunman, through a booking photograph from a 2010 arrest."