News of the Cyber World

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Judge Denies DOJ’s Request for Stay in Social Media Censorship Case

A federal judge on July 10 denied the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) request to stay a ruling that places limits on government communications with social media firms, rejecting the White House’s argument that such an order could put a damper on law enforcement activity online.

U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty wrote that his order last week had created exceptions for communications for cyberattacks, election interference, and national security threats. The DOJ and Biden administration, he wrote, didn’t provide any specific examples that “would provide grave harm to the American people or our democratic processes.”
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“It only prohibits something the Defendants have no legal right to do—contacting social media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner, the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms.”

The judge further wrote that Republican attorneys general who brought the suit are most likely going to prevail in proving that federal agencies and officials “significantly encouraged,” “coerced,” or “jointly participated” in allegedly suppressing social media posts that included information critical of COVID-19 vaccines or questioned the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

In response, lawyers for the Biden administration’s DOJ filed an emergency stay of the injunction at the 5th U.S. District Court of Appeals. They argued that Mr. Doughty’s ruling was too vague and broad.
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It came as the attorneys general for Missouri and Louisiana have submitted a petition to oppose the Biden administration’s motion to stay an injunction against its efforts allowing it to contact social media firms about a range of online content, including its efforts to flag so-called misinformation.

Over the weekend, the two states filed (pdf) a memorandum of opposition to the administration’s motion, coming days after a federal judge partially granted an injunction that blocks various Biden administration officials and government agencies such as the Justice Department and the FBI from working with big tech firms to censor posts on social media. It came in response to a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general, who accused the White House and various federal agencies of putting pressure on social media firms to take down posts or suspend accounts.
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“In the end, their position is fundamentally defiant toward the Court’s judgment. It demonstrates that the Government will continue violating First Amendment rights by censoring core political speech on social media as soon as it can get away with it. The motion to stay should be denied.”

Mr. Doughty ruled on July 4 that the Biden administration must cease contacting social media companies about a broad range of online content, including the administration’s efforts to flag alleged misinformation. The judge said that some of the administration’s past communications with social media companies violated the First Amendment and that during the pandemic, the government assumed a role similar to that of “an Orwellian Ministry of Truth.”

Apple Will Permanently Delete iPhone Photos in July

Apple will permanently delete a photo album from iPhones in about two weeks and has stopped uploading pictures to it, the company confirmed.

My Photo Stream is an iCloud service that originally launched in 2011. What the service does is temporarily uploads photos taken on a device so they can be seen on another device with My Photo Stream enabled. It also allows users to import the pictures to that device.

Up to around 1,000 photos can be stored in My Photo Stream for about 30 days. They are then automatically deleted from Apple’s iCloud.

But it will no longer be available in just a few days, and users are advised to save any photos they may have in that soon-to-be-deleted photo album.

Apple confirmed in a recent bulletin that My Photo Stream will be “shutting down” on July 26. It did not provide a reason for the shuttering of the service that was launched in 2011.

The Cupertino, California-based firm added that new photo uploads stopped on June 26. Apple then provided a statement that there “will be no photos remaining in My Photo Stream” by July 26.

“My Photo Stream is a separate service from iCloud Photos. Moving forward, iCloud Photos is the best way to keep the photos and videos you take up to date across all your devices and safely stored in iCloud,” Apple said. “If you already have iCloud Photos enabled on all of your devices, you don’t need to do anything else—your photos are already uploaded and stored in iCloud.”

Florida Mom Says School Ignored TikTok ‘Death Threat’ Targeting Her Child

Now the angry Polk County mother is attempting to hold her daughter’s school and the entire district school board responsible for what she sees as chronic mishandling of bullying reports.

The dispute began when a 5th-grade girl at Rosabelle W. Blake Academy in Lakeland, Florida, allegedly posted a TikTok video that dramatizes her shooting an 11-year-old classmate in the head.

The Polk County State Attorney’s Office now is deciding whether to charge the child for violating a Florida statute that makes it illegal to make “written or electronic threats to kill or do bodily injury,” according to the Lakeland Police Department.

But school officials didn’t see the video as a problem and took no action, said Trisha Brown, the mother of the child shown as slain in the video.

And after Ms. Brown took her daughter out of school for the last few weeks of the education year, she was told she’d be trespassing if she returned, she told The Epoch Times.

In a statement four days after the video was brought to the school’s attention, Polk County Public Schools released a statement saying that children “do foolish things on social media,” but said school officials take such incidents “seriously and investigate them to determine if there is a credible threat to anyone’s safety.”

Ms. Brown sees the video as a death threat.