The Freedom Bulletin

Photo by International Monetary Fund, via Flickr

A new article came out today in the New York Review of Books and Financial Times that reveals new details about the day Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a hotel maid in New York City. It gives new support to the theory that he may have been the victim of a plot by his political opponents, the UMP party of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Among the new revelations about DSK’s day at the Sofitel hotel:

• DSK suspected that his IMF-issued BlackBerry had been hacked, after a friend who worked as a researcher for the UMP texted him to warn him that at least one of his emails had been read by UMP members. On the morning of the fateful day, May 14, he called his wife, Anne Sinclair, and asked her to arrange for a friend to check out the phone to see if it was bugged.
• According to DSK’s own account, he packed his suitcase, which he left near the foyer of his room, number 2806, before taking a shower at about noon. If this is true, then the maid, Nafissatou Diallo, would have known that he was still in the room.
• The Sofitel’s security director, John Sheehan, called his superior, Rene-Georges Querry, as he was making his way to the hotel after Diallo reported the alleged assault. At the time, Querry was watching a soccer game with Sarkozy.
• Three minutes after receiving a message from Sheehan, hotel staff called the police. This was a full hour after Diallo reported the alleged assault to her supervisor.
• The Sofitel’s chief engineer and an unidentified man high-fived, clapped, and did a celebration dance that lasted three minutes after police were called.
• Diallo entered room 2820, on the same floor as DKS’s room, both before and after the encounter with DSK. The hotel refused to reveal who was staying in that room, but they had not yet checked out at the time Diallo entered the room. Diallo lied about this to investigators, telling them that she hadn’t gone in any rooms after the alleged assault because they all had “do not disturb” signs.
• When DSK left the hotel to meet his daughter for lunch, he inadvertently left his IMF BlackBerry behind. It was mysteriously deactivated at 12:51, and no one knows what happened to it since. It has never been recovered.

The truth may never be known, but one thing is for sure: many people jumped to conclusions far too quickly about what happened that day in room 2806.

Photo by Gage Skidmore

The media are finally starting to treat Ron Paul like a legitimate contender for the 2012 Republican nomination. As the Iowa caucuses approach, polls are showing him in the top tier of candidates (and even in first place), and it looks like the perception of him as a candidate who is in the race to gain an audience for his views but has no chance of winning is starting to change. Here is a sampling of recent articles that bring joy to this Ron Paul supporter’s heart:

• Associated Press: GOP outsider Ron Paul gaining traction in Iowa
• Christian Science Monitor: Ron Paul’s strength in Iowa shows it’s too soon to write him off
• Daily Caller: Ron Paul’s 19% in Iowa may indicate a path to the nomination
• Forbes: Ron Paul and Libertarians Can’t Be Discounted
• The Hill: Ron Paul could be Republican spoiler
• New York Times: Ron Paul Gaining Momentum in Iowa Polls
• Times Leader: Ron Paul supporters hold strong
• Washington Post: Ron Paul is for real in Iowa. Seriously.

Today Congress began holding hearings on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) (its counterpart in the Senate is the PROTECT IP Act). All around the web, various websites and organizations joined together to raise awareness and opposition to this bill, which would really make a dent in the freedom and usefulness of the Internet. According to CNN…

“If SOPA passes, copyright holders would be able to complain to law enforcement officials and get websites shut down. The law would also force intermediaries like search engines and payment processors to withhold their services from targeted websites.

That would be quite a change from the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which mandates that companies ‘act in good faith’ to remove content that infringes on copyrights and other intellectual property laws.”

According to AmericanCensorship.org, SOPA would enable websites to be shut down for mere links to copyrighted material posted by third-party users, and would make it a felony to stream a copyrighted work valued more than $2500. I would definitely recommend contacting your congressman through their site (or with your own message) to make sure this law doesn’t pass.

For more information and views, check out:

• Letter from AOL, eBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo, and Zynga (PDF)
• EFF blog post
• Ars Technica article

The Boston Globe‘s Jeff Jacoby had a great column today about the recent federal court decision halting, temporarily at least, the FDA’s requirement that all cigarette packages display graphic, paternalistic warnings urging people to stop smoking:

The FDA’s gruesome new labels are not designed to provide consumers with useful information about the hazards of smoking. After 45 years of mandatory Surgeon General’s warnings, every non-comatose American knows perfectly well that cigarettes are a noxious health risk. That’s why the share of Americans who smoke at least occasionally has fallen to an all-time low of 19.3 percent, or less than 1 in 5 — a far cry from the more than 42 percent who were smokers in 1965. No one, not even Big Tobacco, disputes Washington’s right to require cigarette makers to disclose pertinent facts about their product’s dangers. Those disclosures, it’s clear, have been effective.

So why the shrill new labels? Not to inform Americans, but to indoctrinate them. To “grab people by the lapels,” as NPR put it last summer, “and be the visual equivalent of someone yelling: ‘Stop smoking!’”

I couldn’t have said it better than he did. Read it at BostonGlobe.com.

On Thursday, a federal court in Virginia ruled that Twitter had to turn over users’ private information to a grand jury investigating possible federal crimes involving WikiLeaks. This ruling affirmed a magistrate judge’s decision in March, which WikiLeaks volunteers Birgitta Jonsdottir, Jacob Appelbaum, and Rop Gonggrijp appealed, with help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union.

It is unclear exactly what data people will no longer have the right to keep private, but it most likely includes IP addresses, email and mail addresses, login and logout times, and possibly private messages. The federal government now, according to Judge Liam O’Grady’s ruling, has the right to access this information without a warrant by issuing what is called a 2703 order. These orders have a lower standard of proof  than probable cause: the government must only have “reasonable grounds” that the information is “relevant and material” to an investigation. The judge’s reasoning was that the WikiLeakers had agreed to Twitter’s privacy policy, which warns that the site could turn over data to law enforcement.

The court also ruled that the 2703 orders can remain secret, denying the WikiLeakers’ request to unseal these documents so that they can find out which other websites, in addition to Twitter, have received similar orders.

It’s not a good thing for freedom when a court rules that people’s private information cannot remain secret, but government orders for people’s private information can. I couldn’t have said it better than Jonsdottir, who called the ruling “a huge backward step for the United States’ legacy of freedom of expression and the right to privacy.”

In somewhat related news, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s mother, Christine Assange, spoke to Green Left Weekly about her son’s legal trials and tribulations, alleged WikiLeaks source Private Bradley Manning, the relationship between Australia and the US, and her plans to protest President Obama’s visit to the Australian parliament. I really admire how she is so outspoken and supportive of her son.

Read the full ruling (PDF)

By now everyone has probably heard about Rick Perry’s gaffe in yesterday’s debate: he forgot the third federal agency he would abolish as president. The best part was the priceless reaction of Ron Paul, who was standing right next to Perry. If you missed it last night, check out the hilarious video above!

As almost the whole world knows, Dr. Conrad Murray was convicted on Monday of involuntary manslaughter for giving Michael Jackson a dose of propofol that ultimately caused his death. After thinking about this for a couple of days, I don’t think this was the right verdict.

In court, the case came down to how exactly Jackson received the fatal dose. Prosecutors claimed that Murray administered the propofol to Jackson, while the defense claimed Jackson injected it himself. But neither side denied that Jackson wanted and asked for the anesthetic. According to Murray, “He was pleading and begging to please please let him have some milk because that was the only thing that would work.”

So basically, Murray did what Jackson asked for. Jackson weighed the risks and the benefits of taking propofol in a home setting to help him sleep, and decided that the benefits outweighed the risks. Yes, this is a dangerous thing to do, and many people would consider it stupid, but people have the right to do dangerous things if they want to, and doctors have the right to help them carry out their decisions. Manslaughter convictions should be reserved for those who cause people’s deaths against their will. Although Jackson’s family members, friends, and fans are understandably upset at his death, and want to see someone punished, the truth is that Jackson died as a result of his own choices (choices he had a right to make). Convicting Murray of manslaughter is not justice.

Murray is appealing his conviction. It’ll be interesting to see how the appeal goes.